Bitterblue

A LAMP WAS lit in her sitting room. The blue of the room was swallowed in darkness and a silver sword lay gleaming on the table, seeming to hold all the light.

Beside it was a note.

Lady Queen,

It's been decided I must leave for Estill in the morning, but I wanted to deliver this from Ornik first. I hope you're as pleased with it as I am and will have no cause to use it while I'm gone. I'm sorry I won't be around to help you with your various puzzles.

Yours, Giddon

Bitterblue lifted the sword. It was a solid shaft, weighty and wellbalanced, well-fitted to her hand, her arm. Simple in design, dazzling in the darkness. Ornik did well, she thought, holding it aloft. I could have used it tonight.

In her bedroom, Bitterblue made a place for the sword and belt on her bedside table. The mirror showed her a girl with a scrape on her forehead, raw and ugly; a girl who was tear-stained, paint-smudged, chap-lipped, messy-haired. All that she'd done tonight was visible on her face. She almost couldn't believe that the morning had started with her dream, her visit to Madlen. That only last night, she'd run with Saf across the city roofs and learned about the truth killers. Now Katsa was gone, on her way to some tunnel. Giddon was soon to leave too, and Raffin and Bann. How did so much happen in so little time?

Saf.

Her mother's embroidery, happy fish and snowflakes and castles in their rows, boats and anchors, the sun and stars, filled Bitterblue with loneliness. Before she even laid herself down properly, she was asleep.

IN THE MORNING, both Thiel and Runnemood were quite taken aback by the scrape on her forehead. Thiel, in particular, acted as if her head were hanging on by a mere thread, until she snapped at him to take hold of himself. Runnemood, seated in the window as usual, pushed his hand through his hair, jeweled rings glinting, eyes glinting. He would not stop staring at her. Bitterblue got the feeling that when she told him the scrape was from practice with Katsa, he didn't believe her.

When Darby came bounding in, sober, bright-eyed, and alarmed that the queen should exhibit something as dreadful as a scratch, Bitterblue decided it was high time to take a break from her tower. 'Library,' she said in response to Runnemood's inquiring eyebrow. 'Don't get your pants in a knot. I won't stay long.'

Making her way down the spiral steps, leaning on the wall to steady herself, Bitterblue changed her mind. She wasn't spending much time in her High Court these days. There never seemed to be anything interesting going on. But today, she'd like to sit with her judges for just a short while, even if it meant gritting her teeth through a tedious boundary dispute or some such. She'd like to look into their faces and measure their manners, get a feel for whether any of those eight powerful men might be the type to silence the city's truthseekers.

The city's truthseekers. Whenever she touched them with her thoughts today, her heart was a bright burst of sadness and shame.

When she walked into the High Court, a trial had already begun. At the sight of her, the entire court stood. 'Catch me up,' she said to the clerk as she crossed the dais to her chair.

'Accused of murder in the first degree, Lady Queen,' said the clerk briskly. 'Monsean name, Birch; Lienid name, Sapphire. Sapphire Birch.'

Her mouth had dropped open and her eyes had whipped to the accused before her brain had even processed what it was hearing. Frozen, Bitterblue stared into the bruised, bloody, and utterly dumbfounded face of Sapphire.

20

BITTERBLUE COULD NOT breathe and, for a moment, she saw stars.

Turning her back to the judges, the floor, the gallery, she stumbled in confusion to the table behind the dais where supplies were kept and where the clerks stood, so that as few people as possible would see her confusion. Clinging to the table so that she wouldn't fall, she reached for a pen, touched it to ink, blotted. She pretended to be jotting something down, something of dire importance that she'd just remembered. She had never held a pen so hard.

When her lungs seemed to be accepting air again, she said, almost whispering, 'Who hurt him?'

'If you'll sit, Lady Queen,' said the voice of Lord Piper, 'we'll put the question to the accused.'

Carefully, Bitterblue turned to face the standing court. 'Tell me,' she said, 'this instant, who hurt him.'

'Hmm,' Piper said, scrutinizing her in puzzlement. 'The accused will answer the queen's inquiry.'

A moment of silence. She didn't want to look at Saf again but it was impossible not to. His mouth was a bloody gash and one eye was swollen almost shut. His coat, so familiar to her, was rent at one of the shoulder seams and spattered with dried blood. 'The Monsean Guard hurt me,' he said, then stopped, then added, 'Lady Queen.' Then, 'Lady Queen,' he repeated in bafflement. 'Lady Queen.'

'That will do,' Piper said sternly.

'Lady Queen,' Saf said again, suddenly falling into his chair, giggling hysterically, and adding, 'How could you?'

'The queen is not the one who hit you,' Piper snapped, 'and if she had, it would not be yours to question. Stand up, man. Show respect!'

'No,' Bitterblue said. 'Every single person here, sit.'

A suspended moment of silence followed. Then, hastily, hundreds of people sat. She spotted Bren in the audience, golden-haired, tight-faced, sitting four or five rows behind her brother. She caught Bren's eye. Bren stared back at her with a look like she wanted to spit in Bitterblue's face. And now Bitterblue was thinking of Teddy, at home in his cot. Teddy would be so disappointed in her when he heard this truth.

Holding tight to her own fingers, Bitterblue moved to her seat and also sat; then jumped up, startled; then sat again, this time not on her own sword. Po. Can you hear me? Will you come? Oh, come quickly!

Keeping a channel open to Po but directing her attention to the large guard presence in the prisoner's hold with Saf, she said, 'Which of you soldiers would care to explain the Monsean Guard's abuse of this man?'

One of the soldiers stood, squinting at her through two impressively bruised eye sockets. 'Lady Queen,' he said, 'I am the captain of this unit. The prisoner resisted arrest, to the extent that one of our men is in the infirmary with a broken arm. We wouldn't have touched him otherwise.'

'You little bitch,' Saf said wonderingly.

'Don't!' Bitterblue yelled, rising, extending a finger at the guard, who'd drawn a fist back to strike Saf again. 'I don't care what he calls you,' she said to the guard, knowing perfectly well whom Saf had meant. 'There will be no striking of prisoners, except in selfdefense.' Oh, Po, he's not making this easy. If he starts telling the truth, I don't know what I'll do. Pretend he's insane? Insanity won't help to free him. And everyone was half standing again, which made her want to scream. Dropping into her seat once more, she said, 'What evidence have I missed? Who's he supposed to have murdered?'

'An engineer in the east city named Ivan, Lady Queen,' Piper said.

'Ivan! The one who built the bridges and stole the watermelons? He's dead?'

'Yes, Lady Queen. That Ivan.'

'When did it happen?'

'Two nights ago, Lady Queen,' said Piper.

'Two nights ago,' Bitterblue repeated, then understood what that meant. Her eyes bored into Piper's. 'The night before last night? At what time?'

'Just before midnight, Lady Queen, under the clock tower on Monster Bridge. There is a witness who saw everything. The hour struck moments later.'

Her heart sinking into her boots, into the floor, into the earth beneath her castle, Bitterblue forced herself to look at Saf. And yes, of course he stared back at her with crossed arms and a nasty, twisted smirk to his broken mouth, for Saf knew perfectly well that just before midnight the night before last, he'd been holding her hands on the roof of the shop, answering her third question, and keeping her from feeling that she would fall off the face of