Bitterblue

He's too interested in Bitterblue. I must get her away. That's why I beg Thiel to hold on.

26

'I'M SURPRISED TO see you,' Bitterblue said the next morning to Rood as she entered her tower office. He was quiet and grim in the absence of his brother, but not meek, not shaking. Clearly not in the throes of a nervous episode.

'I've had a bad twenty-four hours, Lady Queen,' he said quietly. 'I won't pretend otherwise. But Thiel came to me last night and impressed upon me how much I'm needed right now.'

When Rood suffered, his suffering was present and material; he didn't hide behind emptiness. It was a frankness that made Bitterblue want to trust him. 'How much of this did you know?' she ventured.

'I haven't been my brother's confidant for some years, Lady Queen,' he said. 'Frankly, it's best that it was Thiel he encountered in the halls that night. He might have walked right past me and never said a word, and it was his speaking that saved your life.'

'Has the Monsean Guard questioned you about where he might have gone, Rood?'

'Indeed, Lady Queen,' he said. 'I fear I was useless to them. I, my wife, my sons, and my grandchildren are his only living family, Lady Queen, and the castle is the only home we've ever known. He and I grew up here, you know, Lady Queen. Our parents were royal healers.'

'I see.' This man who tiptoed around cringing at everything had a wife, sons, and grandchildren? Were they joys for him? Did he eat with them every night and wake up with them in the morning, and did they comfort him when he was ill? Runnemood seemed so cold and aloof in contrast. Bitterblue couldn't imagine having a sibling and walking past that person blindly in the halls.

'Do you have family, Darby?' she asked her yellow-green-eyed adviser the next time he came rattling up the stairs.

'I had family once,' he responded, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

'You . . .' Bitterblue hesitated. 'You weren't fond of them, Darby?'

'It's more that I haven't thought of them in some time, Lady Queen.'

She was tempted to ask Darby what he did think of, ever, while he was running around like a manic apparatus designed for dispensing paperwork. 'I confess I'm surprised to see you in the offices today too, Darby.'

Darby looked into her eyes and held them, which startled her, because she couldn't remember him ever having done that before. She saw then how dreadful he looked, his eyes bloodshot and too wide, as if he were forcing them open. A tremor in the muscles of his face that she hadn't noticed before. 'Thiel threatened me, Lady Queen,' he said. Then he handed her one paper and one folded note, swept up her outgoing pile, and flipped through it with an expression as if he'd like to punish any piece of paper in the stack that was not in perfect order. Bitterblue imagined him poking holes in the papers with a letter opener, then holding them too close to the fire while they screamed.

'You are an odd bird, Darby,' she said aloud.

'Hmph,' Darby said, then left her alone. Being in her tower office without Thiel gave her a strange sense of suspension, as if she were waiting for the workday to begin. For Thiel to walk back in from whatever errand he was on and keep her company. How furious she was with him for doing something that had forced her to send him away.

The piece of paper Darby had brought listed the results of Runnemood's latest literacy survey. In both castle and city, the statistics hovered around eighty percent. Of course, there was no earthly reason to believe that they were accurate.

The note, written in graphite, was in Po's large, careful hand. Briefly, it told her that Teddy and Saf had been summoned and would meet her in her library alcove at noon.

She went to an east-facing window, worried, suddenly, about how Teddy was going to manage the trip. Leaning her forehead against the glass, she breathed through pain and dizziness. The sky was the color of steel, a late-autumn sky, though it was only October. The bridges stood like mirages, gorgeously grand as they reached across the river. Squinting, she understood what was happening with the air that seemed to change color and move. Snowflakes. Not a storm, just a spitting, the first of the season.

Later, when she left for the library, she stopped in the lower offices to look out over all the clerks who worked here every day. She supposed they numbered thirty-five or forty at any time, depending on . . . well, she didn't really know what it depended on. Where did her clerks go when they weren't here? Did they march around the castle checking on . . . things? A castle was chock-full of things to check on, wasn't it?

Bitterblue made a mental note to ask Madlen whether the medications she was taking for pain were dulling her intellect or whether she actually was stupid. A youngish clerk named Froggatt, perhaps thirty years old with bouncy dark hair, stood bent over a table nearby. He straightened himself and asked her if she needed anything.

'No, thank you, Froggatt,' she said.

'We're all extremely relieved that you survived the attack, Lady Queen,' said Froggatt.

Surprised, she looked into his face, then studied the other faces in the room. They'd all stood, of course, when she'd walked in, and now stared back at her, waiting for her to go, so that they could get back to work. Were they relieved? Really? She knew their names, but nothing about their lives, their personalities, or their histories, other than that they had all worked in her father's administration, for varying lengths of time, depending on their ages. If one of them disappeared and no one told her, she might never notice. If told, how much would she feel?

And it wasn't relief she saw in their faces. It was a blankness, as if they didn't see her, as if their lives existed only inside the paperwork each of them was waiting to return to.

NO ONE WAS in her library alcove except for the woman in the hanging and the young, castle-turning version of herself.

It seemed ironic, somehow, to stand before the sculpture in the state Bitterblue was in now. The sculpture girl's arm was turning into a rock tower with soldiers, strengthening itself, becoming its own protection. Bitterblue's real-life arm was affixed to her side with a sling. Like a reflection in a depressing, distorted mirror, she thought.

She heard steps. Then Holt appeared through the bookshelves, one hand clamped on Teddy's arm and the other on Saf's. Teddy kept turning in circles and, whenever he reached the end of his tether, spinning back again, eyes big as saucers. 'The Linguistic Geography of Estill, East and Far East !' he exclaimed, reaching to the shelves for that title, then grunting as Holt tugged him on.

'Easy with the manhandling, Holt,' Bitterblue said, a little alarmed. 'Teddy doesn't deserve it. And I expect Saf gets too much pleasure out of it,' she added, taking in Saf's righteous indignation as he tried to shake Holt off. Saf had fresh bruises. They gave him the look of a hooligan.

'I'll be within calling distance, Lady Queen, should you need me,' Holt said. With one last, silver-gray glare at Saf, he stalked away.

'Did you get here all right, Teddy?' she asked. 'You didn't walk?'

'No, Lady Queen,' Teddy said. 'We were picked up in a lovely carriage. And you, Lady Queen? You're all right?'

'Yes, of course,' Bitterblue said, moving to the table, pulling out a chair for him one-handed. 'Sit down.'

Teddy sat carefully, then touched the leather of the manuscript on the table before him. His eyes widened as he read the label. Then filled with wonder as he began to read more labels.

'You may take as many of them as you like, Teddy,' Bitterblue said. 'I hoped to hire you to print them. If you have friends with presses, I'd like to hire them too.'

'Thank you, Lady Queen,' Teddy whispered. 'I accept gladly.'

Bitterblue dared a glance at Saf, who stood with his hands in his pockets, carefully looking bored. 'I