your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?'
Bitterblue had never thought of it this way before. She found that she was holding Madlen's hand, her eyes full of tears.
Finally, after a while, she said, 'The dream didn't start out bad.'
'Oh?' said Madlen. 'Did you come here to talk about your dream, Lady Queen?'
'Is it serious?'
'I think I was holding my sword too hard at practice this morning.'
'Well,' said Madlen, seeming to understand. She took Bitterblue's hand and explored it with light fingers. 'That sounds easily mended, Lady Queen.'
It did mend something, those few minutes of Madlen's gentle touch.
ON HER WAY back to her tower, Bitterblue encountered Raffin in the middle of the hallway, peering worriedly at a knife in his hands.
'What is it?' asked Bitterblue, stopping before him. 'Has something happened, Raffin?'
'Lady Queen,' he said, politely moving the knife far away from her and, in the process, nearly poking a passing member of the Monsean Guard, who jumped away in alarm. 'Oh, dear,' Raffin said. 'That's just it.'
'What's just it, Raffin?'
'Bann and I are taking a trip into Sunder, and Katsa says I must wear this on my arm, but I truly feel the danger is greater if I do. What if it falls out and impales me? What if it flings itself from my sleeve and lodges in someone else? I'm perfectly content poisoning people,' Raffin muttered, pulling up his sleeve and holstering the knife. 'Poison is civilized and controlled. Why must everything involve knives and blood?'
'It will not fly out of your sleeve, Raffin,' said Bitterblue soothingly. 'I promise. Sunder?'
'Only briefly, Lady Queen. Po will stay here with you.'
'I thought Po and Giddon were taking the tunnel into Estill.'
Raffin cleared his throat. 'Giddon isn't desirous of Po's company just now, Lady Queen,' he said delicately. 'Giddon is going alone.'
'I see,' said Bitterblue. 'Where will you go after Sunder? Not back home?'
'As it happens, Lady Queen,' said Raffin, 'that is not an option. My father has made it known that members of the Council aren't welcome in the Middluns at the moment.'
'What?' said Bitterblue. 'Even his own son?'
'Oh, it's only political bluster, Lady Queen. I know my father, regrettably. He's trying to appease the kings of Estill, Sunder, and Wester because they dislike him even more than they used to, now that Nander has fallen at the hands of an organization that likely includes me and Katsa. I don't expect he could keep any of us out without making more of a scene than he wants to. But it's no inconvenience to us at the moment, so we won't protest. It'll chafe at Giddon most, if it continues. He never likes to be away from his estate for too long. Is it really supposed to feel like this?' Raffin demanded, shaking his forearm.
'Like you have a blade against your skin?' asked Bitterblue. 'Yes. And if someone tries to hurt you, you must use it, Raffin. Assuming there's no time to respond with poison, of course,' she added dryly.
'I've done it before,' Raffin said darkly. 'It's only a matter of information. As long as I know an attack is being planned, I can foil the whole thing as well as anyone else. And usually no one needs to die.' Then he sighed. 'How have things come to this, Lady Queen?'
'Have things ever been any other way?'
'Peaceful, you mean, and safe?' he said. 'I suppose not. And I suppose we may as well be in the thick of the violence, trying to take some control over the way it plays out.'
Bitterblue considered this prince, the son of a bully king, the cousin of a fireball like Katsa. 'Will you like to be king, Raffin?'
His answer was in the resignation that came over his face. 'Does it matter?' he responded quietly. Then he added, shrugging, 'I shall have less time for mayhem. And, sadly, less time for my medicines. And I will have to marry, because a king must produce heirs.' Glancing into her face, he said with a small smile, 'You know, I would ask you to marry me, except that it's not a thing I would ask anyone without Bann present, nor would I actually make you such an inadequate offer in earnest. It would solve a great many of my problems and create problems for you, hm?'
She couldn't help smiling. 'I confess it's not a future I would wish for,' she said. 'On the other hand, it's no less romantic than any other proposal I've ever gotten. Ask me again in five years. Perhaps then I'll be in need of something complicated and strange that looks good to the rest of the world.'
Chuckling, Raffin practiced straightening his arm, bending it, straightening it again. 'What if I stick Bann by accident?' he asked grumpily.
'Just open your eyes wide and look where you're stabbing,' said Bitterblue cheerfully.
RUNNING THROUGH THE east city that night, she wasn't certain what she was running toward. With truthseekers and truth killers on her mind she was alert, trusting no one she passed, conscious of the blades on her own arms, of how quickly she could whip them out if she needed to. When a hooded woman passed under a streetlamp and gold paint on her lips caught the light, it stopped Bitterblue like a shock. Gold paint, and glitter around her eyes.
Bitterblue stood, breathing hard. Yes, it was late September; yes, it could very well be the equinox. Yes, it did seem likely that some people in the city would celebrate, discreetly, those traditional rituals. For example, the same people who buried their dead and stole back truths.
For the merest instant, Bitterblue was uncertain. In that instant, she could have turned back. It wasn't thought; it didn't go that deep. It was in the fingertips she brought to her lips, and on her skin.
She ran on.
TILDA ANSWERED HER knock and pulled her into a room she barely recognized, so full was it of people and noise. Tilda bent down and kissed Bitterblue on the lips, smiling, wearing an ornament in her hair, more like a hat, really, made of hanging, swaying drops of glass.
'Come kiss Teddy,' Tilda said. Or, at least, it was what Bitterblue thought she said, for two young men to her right were singing raucously, arms linked. One of them, seeing Bitterblue, leaned in, pulling the other along, and gave her a peck on the lips. Half of his face was painted with silver glitter, to dazzling effect—he was attractive, they were both attractive—and Bitterblue began to understand that it was going to be an alarming night.
Tilda led her through the doorway into Teddy and Saf's apartment, where light blazed on people's jewelry and face glitter, on the golden drinks they held in tumblers. The room was too small for so many people. Bren appeared out of nowhere, took Bitterblue's chin, and kissed her. Flowers were painted all across Bren's cheekbones and down her neck.
When Bitterblue finally reached Teddy's cot in the corner, she dropped into a chair beside him, breathless, relieved to find him unpainted and dressed just like his usual self. 'I suppose I have to kiss you,' she said.
'Indeed,' he said cheerily. Pulling on her hand, drawing her near, he gave her a soft and sweet kiss. 'Isn't it marvelous?' he said, smacking one last little kiss onto her nose.
'Well, it's something,' said Bitterblue, whose head was spinning.
'I just love parties,' he said.
'Teddy,' she said, noticing the glass in his hand, full of some amber liquid, 'should you be drinking that in your condition?'
'Perhaps not. I'm drunk,' he said gleefully, then threw back his glass and held it out to a fellow nearby for a refill. The fellow gave him both a refill and a kiss. Someone took Bitterblue's hand and pulled her up from the chair. Turning, she was kissing Saf.
It was not like the other kisses, not at all. 'Sparks,' he whispered into the place beneath her ear, nuzzling her, pulling her hood back, which made her crane her face up and kiss him more. He seemed amenable to more kissing. When it occurred to her that eventually he might stop kissing her, her hands reached to take hold of his shirt and anchor him there, and she bit him.
'Sparks,' he said, grinning, then chuckling, but staying right where he was. His eyelids and the skin around his eyes were painted gold in the shape of a mask, which was startling, and exciting.
Rough hands yanked them apart.
