Bitterblue

'Unless every one of you objects to that, he's free to go.'

Piper cleared his throat. 'That's acceptable to me, Lady Queen.'

'Very well,' Bitterblue said. She turned and, without another glance at Saf or Po or any of the gaping audience, marched to the exit at the back of the dais.

Po, don't let him get away. Bring him somewhere where I can talk to him privately. Bring him to my rooms.

21

WHEN BITTERBLUE BURST into her sitting room, Fox was polishing the royal crown.

'Shall I come back later, Lady Queen?' she asked, with one glance at the queen.

'No. Yes. No,' said Bitterblue, a bit wildly. 'Where is Helda?'

'Lady Queen?' Helda's voice came from the doorway behind her. 'What on earth is the matter?'

'Helda,' said Bitterblue, 'I did something terrible. Don't let anyone in but Po and whoever he brings, all right? I can't talk to anyone else.'

'Of course, Lady Queen,' said Helda. 'What happened?'

Bitterblue began to pace. She couldn't begin to explain. To get away from the need to do so, she waved her hands hopelessly, then pushed past Helda to the foyer and her bedroom and shut the door. Inside, she commenced pacing again, her sword slamming against her leg every time she turned.

Where is Po? Why must they take so long?

Not certain when or how she'd crossed the room, she found herself bent over her mother's chest, clinging to its edges. The figures carved into its lid blurred with her tears.

Then the door opened and Bitterblue scrambled to her feet, turned, tripped, sat down hard on the trunk. Po came in and shut the door behind him.

'Where is he?' Bitterblue asked.

'In your sitting room,' Po said. 'I've asked Helda and that girl to step out. Is there any way I can convince you not to do this now? He's had an awful lot thrown at him and no time to absorb it.'

'I need to explain.'

'I really think that if you gave him some time—'

'I promise I'll give him cartloads of time, after I explain.'

'Bitterblue—'

Bitterblue stood, swept toward Po, and stopped before him, chin raised, staring at him.

'Yes, all right,' Po said, rubbing his face with both ring-covered hands, defeated. 'I'm not leaving,' he added flatly.

'Po—'

'Be as queeny as you like, Bitterblue. He's angry, he's hurt; he's clever and slippery; this morning he broke someone's arm. I will not leave you alone in these rooms with him.'

'Can't you just extract some sort of Lienid oath of honor from him or something?' she shot at him sarcastically.

'I already have,' Po said. 'I'm still not leaving.' Marching to the bed, he sat, crossing legs and arms.

Bitterblue watched him for a moment, knowing that she was releasing feelings of one kind or another to him, not knowing herself exactly what they were. Managing, through some heroic effort of will, to contain how much she wished he would get past this addleheaded crisis about his Grace. Po said, 'That ass Quall on your High Court hates the Lienid. He tells himself he thinks that we're inbred, over-muscled simpletons, but really what bothers him is that, in his opinion, we're better looking than he is. There's no logic to it, either, for he's lumped Saf into it, even though, as he himself pointed out, Saf doesn't look Lienid. He's jealous of how well Saf and I look in our gold. Can you believe that? If he could've convicted us both of murder and taken our freedom away by virtue of that alone, he would have. He kept trying to imagine us without it.'

'Without . . . your freedom?'

'Without our gold,' Po said. 'I'll stay in here while you talk to Sapphire. If he touches you, I'll come in and choke him to death.'

Saf'S GOLD WAS the first thing she saw when she entered the sitting room, sunlit in his ears and on his fingers. She understood all at once that she wouldn't like to see him without it. It would be like seeing him with eyes that weren't his, or hearing him speak in a different voice.

The gash in his coat broke her heart. She wanted to touch him.

Then he turned to her and she saw the disgust carried in every feature of his battered face and in every line of his body.

He dropped to his knees, eyes raised, staring straight into hers—the perfect mockery of subservience, for no man on his knees ever raised his eyes to a sovereign's face. It defeated the purpose of lowering oneself.

'Stop that!' she said. 'Get up.'

'Whatever you wish, Lady Queen,' he said sarcastically, leaping to his feet.

She was beginning to understand the game. 'Please don't do this, Saf,' she pleaded. 'You know it's just me.'

Saf snorted.

'What? What is it?'

'Nothing at all,' he said, 'Lady Queen.'

'Oh, just tell me, Saf.'

'I wouldn't dream of contradicting the queen, Lady Queen.'

In another place, in another conversation between them, she might have slapped his smug face. Perhaps Sparks would have slapped him right now. But Bitterblue couldn't, for Bitterblue, slapping Saf, would only be playing into his game: The mighty queen slaps the lowly subject. And the more like a subject she treated him, the more control he had over the situation. Which confused her, because it made no sense that a queen should transfer power to her subject by mistreating him.

She just wanted to be able to talk to him. 'Saf,' she said. 'Until now, we've been friends and equals.'

He shot her a look of pure derision.

'What?' she begged. 'Tell me. Please talk to me.'

Saf took a few steps toward the crown on its stand and put his hand full on it, stroking the soft gold of its face, measuring the gems between his fingers. She kept her mouth shut, even though it felt like a bodily assault. But when he went so far as to lift it, placing it on his own head, turning to stare at her balefully, a ruin-eyed, bloody-mouthed, tattered-coat king, she couldn't stop herself. 'Put that down,' she hissed.

'Hm?' he murmured as he removed the crown, setting it back on its velvet cushion. 'We're not equals after all, then, are we?'

'I don't care about the stupid crown,' she said, flustered. 'I only care that my father was the last man I ever saw wear it, and when you put it on, I remember him.'

'Ironic,' he said, 'for I've been thinking of how much you make me think of him.'

It didn't matter that she'd had the same thoughts herself. It hurt far more coming from Saf. 'You have lied just as much as I,' she whispered.

'I have never once lied,' he snarled in an ugly voice, taking a step toward her, so that she had to step back, startled. 'I've kept things from you when I needed to. But I've never lied!'

'You knew I wasn't who I said. That was no secret!'

'You're the queen!' Saf yelled, taking another step forward. 'The rutting queen! You manipulated me! And not just for information!'

Po appeared in the doorway. He took hold of the door frame above his head, casually, with one hand. Raising his eyebrows, he leaned and waited.

'Forgive me, Lord Prince,' Saf said miserably, confusing Bitterblue by lowering his eyes before Po, hanging his head, stepping back from her with no equivocation.

'The queen is my cousin,' said Po calmly.