The murmuring voices stopped. Both Helda and Madlen came and leaned over her, Helda's face tight with tension and relief, her hand reaching down to stroke the hair at Bitterblue's temples. 'It's been quite a night, both in and out of the castle, Lady Queen,' she said quietly. 'What a fright Madlen had when Holt came running into the infirmary with you, and I didn't fare much better when Madlen brought you to me.'
'But how did Thiel know?' she whispered.
'He didn't say, Lady Queen,' said Helda. 'He came here frantic, looking like he'd been fighting with a bear, and told me that if I knew where you were and what was good for me, I'd send your Lienid Guard to you.'
'Where is he now?' Bitterblue whispered.
'I've no idea, Lady Queen.'
'Send someone to bring him to me,' said Bitterblue. 'Is everyone else all right?'
'Prince Po had a terrible night, Lady Queen,' said Madlen. 'Agitated and inconsolable. I had to drug him when Holt came in with you, for he was wild. He put up a fight; Holt had to hold him down for me.'
'Oh, poor Po,' said Bitterblue. 'Is he going to be all right, Madlen?'
'He's in the same shape you're in, Lady Queen, which is to say that I firmly believe he'd be on the mend if he would only consent to rest. Here, Lady Queen,' she said, pressing a folded note into Bitterblue's good hand. 'Once we'd gotten the medicine into him and he knew he was a lost cause, he went to great effort to dictate this to me. He made me promise to give it to you.'
Bitterblue opened the note one-handed, trying to remember the key she was using with Po these days. Poppyseed cake? Yes. With that key, Po's ciphered message in Madlen's loopy hand showed itself to say, more or less:
WHEN HER LIENID Guard could not find Runnemood, Bitterblue called in the Monsean Guard. They couldn't find him either. He was nowhere to be found in the castle, nor were they having any luck in the city.
'He's run for it,' said Bitterblue in frustration. 'Where is his family? Have you talked to Rood? Runnemood's supposed to have a thousand friends in the city. Find out who they are, Captain, and find him!'
'Yes, Lady Queen,' said Captain Smit, standing before her desk, looking appropriately stern but also befuddled. 'And you have definite reason to believe that Runnemood was behind the attack on your person, Lady Queen?'
'He is certainly behind something,' said Bitterblue. 'Where's Thiel? Where is everybody? Send someone up, will you?'
The person the captain sent up was, in fact, Thiel. His hair was worried into a vertical arrangement and his color was gray. When he saw her arm and the purple marks on her throat, he began to blink with bright, wet eyes. 'You should be in bed, Lady Queen,' he said hoarsely.
'I had to get out of it,' said Bitterblue flatly, 'to deal with the question of why Runnemood murdered nine of my prisoners, then snuck into a passage under the east wall with you.'
Thiel collapsed, shaking, into a chair. 'Runnemood murdered nine prisoners?' he said. 'Lady Queen, how do you know all this?'
'We're not discussing what I know, Thiel. We're discussing what I don't. Why did you go into a secret passage with Runnemood last night, how did you know to send my Lienid Guard to my rescue, and what does one have to do with the other?'
'It's because he told me, Lady Queen,' said Thiel, sitting hopeless and confused in his chair. 'I came upon him very late. He didn't seem himself, Lady Queen. He was wild-eyed, smiling too much, making me nervous. I followed him into that passage, hoping that if I stayed with him, I could learn what was wrong. When I pressed him, he told me he'd done something brilliant, but of course I didn't know about the prisoners. Then he told me you'd gone out into the city and he'd sent a team to kill you.'
'I see,' said Bitterblue. 'Just like that, he told you?'
'He was nothing like himself, Lady Queen,' Thiel said again, grasping his hair. 'He seemed to have some crazy idea that I'd be pleased to hear what he was saying. Truly, I believe he'd gone mad.'
'And were you surprised?'
'Well, of course, Lady Queen. I was flabbergasted! I left him and ran back, straight to your rooms, hoping he'd lied and I'd find you safely there!'
'Where is Runnemood, Thiel?' said Bitterblue. 'What's going on?'
'I don't know where he is, Lady Queen,' said Thiel in amazement.
'I don't even know where that passage leads. Why do I feel you don't believe me?'
Bitterblue shot up from her seat, unable to contain her heartache. 'Because Runnemood did not suddenly go mad,' she said, 'and you know it. He's the most sane of you all. And you've been telling me not to speak out loud about Leck's time, you've been telling me to bring my worries about the past to you before anyone else. You've been at odds with him, and giving me subtle warnings. Haven't you? What's your reason for those things if you didn't know he had a vendetta against truthseekers?'
Thiel was beginning to recede from her. She recognized the signs. He was pulling into himself, drawing his arms close, and he hadn't risen when she'd done so. 'Now I don't know what you're talking about, Lady Queen,' he whispered. 'You're confusing me.'
There was a knock at that moment. Fox poked her red head into the room. 'Lady Queen,' she said, 'forgive me.'
'What is it?' Bitterblue cried in vexation.
'The scarf Helda promised, Lady Queen, to hide your bruises,' said Fox.
Bitterblue waved her inside impatiently, then gestured her away. And then she stared in wonderment at the scarf Fox had left on her desk. Memories flashed through her, for this scarf had belonged to Ashen. It was soft gray with flecks of silver and she hadn't thought of it once, not once in eight years; but now she remembered Ashen counting Bitterblue's fingers and kissing them. She remembered Ashen laughing—laughing! Bitterblue had said something funny and made Ashen laugh.
Lifting the scarf with utter gentleness, as if a breath could blow it apart, Bitterblue wrapped it twice around her neck, then sat down. Patted it, smoothed it.
She looked up at Thiel and found him gawking at her with stricken eyes.
'That was your mother's scarf, Lady Queen,' he said. Then tears began to run down his face. Something within his eyes seemed to collapse, but it was a living thing in there—not emptiness, but life struggling with pain. 'Forgive me, Lady Queen,' he said, crying harder now. 'I have known since that trial two weeks ago that Runnemood was involved in something terrible. He'd framed that young LienidMonsean, you see. I walked in on his anger after it failed, and forced the truth from him. I've been trying to deal with it myself. He was my friend for fifty years. I thought that if I could try to understand why he would do such a thing, then I could bring him to his senses.'
'But, you hid it from me?' cried Bitterblue. 'You knew what he'd done, and you hid it?'
'I have always wanted your path to be easy, Lady Queen,' he said hopelessly, dashing his tears away. 'I've wanted to shield you from any more pain.'
THERE WASN'T A great deal more that Thiel could tell her.
'But why did he do it, Thiel? What was he trying to achieve? Was he working for someone? Was he, perhaps, working with Danzhol?'
'I don't know, Lady Queen. I couldn't get him to tell me any of that. I could make nothing logical of it at all.'
'I can see some logic,' she said grimly. 'He had a logical understanding of the need to go into the prisons and stab the innocent, and all those he'd paid to lie or kill. Especially after I'd ordered that everyone be retried. Then he set the place on fire to hide what he'd done. He was cleaning up after himself, wasn't he? I wonder, was he responsible for the attack on me that left that scrape on my head? And did he know who I was?'
'Lady Queen,' said Thiel, alarmed. 'You're speaking of a great many things I know nothing about and am distressed to hear of. You never told us you were attacked before this. And Runnemood never spoke of paying people to kill other people.'
'Until tonight,' Bitterblue said, 'when he told you he'd hired people to kill me.'
