Bitterblue

manuscripts in a patch of sun. Thiel and I are quite overwhelmed with the work you're neglecting, Lady Queen. Do you take my meaning?'

Passing The Kissing Traditions to Giddon, Bitterblue stood, so that Runnemood had to jump backward in order to avoid them colliding. She took not just his meaning, but his condescending tone, and it was the tone that offended her. Nor did she like the way his eyes played over the books Giddon was holding, not as if he truly believed them to be harmless, dusty old manuscripts; more as if he were trying to assess each one and disliking all that he saw.

She wanted to tell him that a trained dog could do the work she was neglecting. She wanted to tell him that she knew somehow, in some way she could neither justify nor explain, that this time she spent outside her office was just as important to the kingdom as the work she did in her tower with charters, orders, and laws. But some instinct told her to protect these thoughts from him. To protect these books Giddon was guarding against his chest.

'Runnemood,' she said instead, 'I hear you're supposed to be good at manipulating people. Try a little harder to make me like you, all right? I'm the queen. Your life will be nicer if I like you.'

She had the satisfaction of Runnemood's surprise. He stood with his eyebrows high and his mouth forming a small O. It was pleasant to see him looking silly, pleasant to see him struggling to regain his dignified scorn. Finally, he simply stalked away into the castle.

Bitterblue sat down again beside Giddon, who seemed to be having some trouble subduing an amused expression.

'I was about to ask you something unpleasant,' Bitterblue said, 'when he came along.'

'Lady Queen,' he said, still fighting with his face, 'I'm all yours.'

'Can you think of a reason why Leck would have chosen four healers as his advisers?'

Giddon thought about this for a moment. 'Well,' he said. 'Yes.'

'Go on,' she said miserably. 'It's nothing I'm not already thinking.'

'Well,' said Giddon again, 'Leck is well known for his behavior with his animals. Cutting them, letting them heal, then cutting them again. What if he liked to hurt people, then let them heal? If it was a part of the way he liked to conduct his politics—as sick as it sounds—then it would've made sense for him to have had healers at his side all the time.'

'They've lied to me, you know,' whispered Bitterblue. 'They've told me they don't know the secret things he did, but if they were mending his victims, then they saw, plainly, what he did.'

Giddon paused. 'Some things are too painful to talk about, Lady Queen,' he said quietly.

'I know,' she said. 'Giddon, I know. Asking would be unpardonably cruel. But how can I help anyone now if I don't understand what happened then? I need the truth, don't you see?'

16

IT WAS SAF who came barreling straight at her in an alleyway that night, Saf, who, gasping, grabbed her and hoisted her through some sort of broken doorway into a rank-smelling room and smashed her against a wall; Saf, who, through the entire enterprise, whispered to her fiercely, 'Sparks, it's me, it's me, I beg you, don't hurt me, it's me'—but still, she'd whipped her knives out and also kneed him in the groin before she'd entirely comprehended what was happening.

'Arrhhlglm,' he said, more or less, doubling over, still crushing her.

'What the high skies are you doing?' Bitterblue hissed, trying to wriggle out of his grip.

'If they find us,' he said, 'they're going to kill us, so shut your mouth.'

Bitterblue was shaking, not just from her own shock and confusion, but from fear of what she could have done to him in those first moments, had he provided her with room to drive a knife. Then footsteps slapped in the alley outside and she forgot all that.

The footsteps pattered past the broken doorway, continued on, slowed. Stopped. When they reversed direction, creeping back toward the building where they hid, Saf swore in her ear. 'I know a place,' he said, hauling her across the dark room. When a low, deep, living exhalation of breath nearby caused her to jump nearly out of her wits, he whispered, 'Climb.' Bewildered, she groped forward and discovered a ladder. The smell of the place made sense to her suddenly. This was a barn of some sort, the thing that had breathed was a cow, and Saf wanted her to climb.

'Climb,' he repeated when she hesitated, pushing her forward. 'Go!'

Bitterblue reached up, took an iron grip, and climbed. Don't think, she said to herself. Don't feel. Just climb. She couldn't see where she was headed or how many rungs were left to climb. Nor could she see how high she'd gone so far, and she imagined only empty space below her.

Saf, at her heels, finally scuttled up around her and spoke low in her ear. 'You don't like ladders.'

'In the dark,' she said, humiliated. 'In the—'

'All right,' he said. 'Quick,' and then he hoisted her up, turning her so that he was carrying her like a child, front to front. She wrapped her arms and legs around him as if he were the earth's pillar, because there did not seem to be any other alternative. He sped up the ladder. It was only when he lowered her onto some sort of solid ground that she was able to contemplate her outrage. And then there was no more time for that, because he was pulling her across what she suddenly recognized as a roof. He was pushing her up onto the higher roof of a higher building, and tugging her, running, they were swarming up a tinny, slippery slant, over an apex, down its opposite side, then down onto another roof, then up onto another and another.

He dragged her up the slant of the sixth or seventh roof to an adjoining wall and crouched against the siding. She dropped beside him, pressing up against the beautiful, solid wall, shaking.

'I hate you,' she said. 'I hate you.'

'I know,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

'I'm going to kill you,' she said. 'I'm going—'

She was going to vomit. She turned her back to him, lopsided on her knees across the roof, hands clinging to slippery tin, trying to push the sourness down. A minute passed in which she successfully managed not to throw up. Miserably, she said, 'How do we get down from here?'

'This is the shop,' he said. 'We step right through that window there into Bren and Tilda's bedroom. No more ladders, I promise. All right?'

The shop. Taking a gulp of air, she found that the tin of the roof seemed less like it was trying to buck her off. Shifting carefully, so that her back was to the wall, she sat, adjusting the Kissing Traditions manuscript, which was hanging in a bag across her front. Then she glanced over at Sapphire. He lay on his back, dark in profile, knees bent, considering the sky. She caught the faintest gleam in one of his ears.

'I'm sorry,' she said quietly. 'I'm not rational about heights.'

He tilted his head to her. 'No worries, Sparks. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Mathematics?' he suggested brightly, perking up, then reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a gold disc she recognized. 'Here,' he said, tossing the heavy watch into her lap. 'Tell me what time it is.'

'I thought you were supposed to return this to the family of the watchmaker,' said Bitterblue.

'Ah,' he said, looking sheepish. 'I was, and no doubt I will. It's just, I'm rather fond of that one.'

'Fond of it,' said Bitterblue, snorting. She opened the watch, read a time of half past fourteen, sat in an empty room with the numbers for a moment, then announced to Saf that it would be midnight in twenty-four minutes.

'It seems that the whole city got started early tonight,' said Saf to that, dryly.

'I assume they didn't hear us? We wouldn't be sitting here stargazing if they were still after us, would we?'

'I threw a few chickens around before I came up that ladder,' he said. 'You didn't hear them making a racket?'

'I was distracted by the conviction that I was going to die.'