Bitterblue

and I'll help you. We could be a team.'

'If you think I'm going to jump at a vague offer like that, I'm insulted.'

'I'll bring you proof,' Bitterblue said, with no idea what she meant by it, but certain, desperately, that she would figure it out. 'I'll prove to you that I can help you. I've helped you before, haven't I?'

'I don't believe you work alone,' Saf said, 'but I'm corked if I can place who you work for. Is your mother part of this? Does she know you come out at nights?'

Bitterblue thought about how to answer that. Finally, she said in a sort of a hopeless voice, 'If she knew, I'm not sure what she would think.'

Sapphire considered her for a moment, the purples of his eyes soft and clear. She considered him in return, then looked away, wishing she weren't so conscious of certain people sometimes, people who were more alive to her, somehow, more breathing, more invigorating, than other people. 'Do you suppose that if you bring proof that we can trust you,' Saf said, 'you and I will start having conversations that move in straight lines?'

Bitterblue smiled.

Grabbing another handful of food, shooting to his feet, Saf cocked his head at the shop door. 'I'll walk you home.'

'There's no need.'

'Think of it as my payment for the medicines, Sparks,' he said, bouncing on his heels. 'I'll deliver you safely to your mother.'

His energy, and his words, too often, brought to mind things she wanted and couldn't have. She had nothing left to argue with.

* * * * *

IT WAS A great relief to leave Leck's stories behind and move on to the journals of Grella, the ancient Monsean explorer. The volume she was reading was called Grella's Harrowing Journey to the Source of the XXXXXX, and the name of the river, clearly the Dell by context, was obliterated every time it appeared. Odd.

She entered the library one day in mid-September to find Death scribbling at his desk, the cat glaring at his elbow. As Bitterblue stopped before them, Death pushed something toward her without looking up.

'The next book?' she asked.

'What else would it be, Lady Queen?'

The reason she'd asked was that the volume appeared to be not a book but a stack of papers, wrapped in a length of rough leather, tied shut. Now she read the card secured under its leather tie: The Book of Ciphers.

'Oh!' Bitterblue said, the hairs of her body suddenly standing on end. 'I remember that book. Did my father really give it to me?'

'No, Lady Queen,' said Death. 'I thought you might like to read a volume your mother chose for you.'

'Yes!' Bitterblue said, unfastening the ties. 'I remember that I read this with my mother. 'It will keep our minds sharp,' she said. But—' Bitterblue flipped through the loose, handwritten pages, confused. 'This is not the book we read. That book had a dark cover and was typeset. What is this? I don't know the handwriting.'

'It is my handwriting, Lady Queen,' said Death, not looking up from his work.

'Why? Are you the author?'

'No.'

'Then why—'

'I have been rewriting, by hand, the books King Leck burned, Lady Queen.'

Something tightened in Bitterblue's throat. 'Leck burned books?'

'Yes, Lady Queen.'

'From this library?'

'Yes, and other libraries, Lady Queen, and private collections. Once he'd decided to destroy a book, he sought out every copy.'

'What books?'

'A variety. Books on history, the philosophy of monarchy, medicine—'

'He burned books about medicine?'

'A select few, Lady Queen. And books on Monsean tradition—'

'Such as burying the dead instead of burning.'

Death managed to combine his nod with a frown, thus maintaining, in agreement, the appropriate level of disagreeableness. 'Yes, Lady Queen.'

'And books on ciphers that I read with my mother.'

'It would seem so, Lady Queen.'

'How many books?'

'How many books what, Lady Queen?'

'How many books did he destroy!'

'Four thousand thirty-one unique titles, Lady Queen,' Death said crisply. 'Tens of thousands of individual volumes.'

'Skies,' Bitterblue said, breathless. 'And how many have you managed to rewrite?'

'Two hundred forty-five titles, Lady Queen,' he said, 'over the past eight years.'

245, out of 4,031? She calculated: just over six percent; some thirty books a year. It meant that Death took an entire book down by hand, more than an entire book, every two weeks, which was a mammoth feat, but it was absurd; he needed help. He needed a row of printers at nine or ten presses. He needed to recite ten different books at once, feeding each typesetter one page at a time. Or, one sentence? How fast could a setter lay down type? How fast could someone like Bren or Tilda print multiple copies and move to the next page? And—oh, this was dreadful. What if Death took ill? What if he died? There were . . . 3,786 books that existed nowhere, no place but in the Graceling mind of this man. Was he getting enough sleep? Did he eat well? How old was he? At this rate, it was a project that would take him . . . over 120 years!

Death was speaking again. With effort, she pulled her thoughts back. 'In addition to the books King Leck obliterated,' he was saying, 'he also forced me to alter one thousand four hundred forty-five titles, Lady Queen, removing or replacing words, sentences, passages he considered objectionable. The rectification of such errors waits until I've completed my current, more urgent project.'

'Of course,' Bitterblue said, barely hearing, progressing unstoppably to the conviction that no books in the kingdom were more important for her to read right now than the 245 that Death had rewritten, 245 books that had offended Leck so deeply that he'd destroyed them. It could only be because they'd contained the truth, about something. About anything; it didn't matter. She needed to read them.

'Grella's Harrowing Journey to the Source of the River XXXXXX,' she added, suddenly realizing. 'Leck forced you to cross out the word Dell throughout.'

'No, Lady Queen. He forced me to cross out the word Silver.'

'Silver? But the book is about the River Dell. I recognize the geography.'

'The true name of the River Dell is the River Silver, Lady Queen,' Death said.

Bitterblue stared at him, not comprehending. 'But, everyone calls it the Dell!'

'Yes,' he said. 'Thanks to Leck, almost everyone does. They are wrong.'

She leaned both hands against the desk, too overwhelmed, suddenly, to stand without support. 'Death,' she said with her eyes closed.

'Yes, Lady Queen?' he asked impatiently.

'Are you familiar with the library alcove that has a hanging of a red-haired woman and a sculpture of a child turning into a castle?'

'Of course, Lady Queen.'

'I want a table moved into that alcove, and I want you to pile all the volumes you've rewritten on that table. I wish to read them and I wish that to be my workspace.'

Bitterblue left the library, holding the cipher manuscript tight to her chest as if it might not actually be real. As if, if she stopped pressing it to herself, it might disappear.