Bitterblue

'There's a spiral staircase that leads all the way up from the library, Lady Queen,' said Fox. 'I was just trying it for the first time. Ornik told me about it, Lady Queen. Apparently it runs past Lady Katsa's rooms as well, and the Council uses it sometimes for meetings. Do you think I'll ever be allowed to attend Council meetings, Lady Queen?'

'That will be for Prince Po to decide,' said Bitterblue evenly, 'and the others. Have you met any of them, Fox?'

'Not Prince Po,' said Fox, then went on to talk about the others. Bitterblue only half attended, because Po was the one who mattered. She wished she'd had Po chat with Fox before he'd gone. And she was also distracted because something else entirely had captured her thoughts: She was seeing, in her mind, a succession of hidden entrances behind wild, strangely colored creatures. The door to Leck's stairway, hidden behind the blue horse in her sitting room. The secret entrance to the library, hidden behind the wild-haired woman in the hanging. The strange, colorful insects on the tiles of Katsa's bath; and now, a door in the wall behind this horrible scene.

'Forgive me, Fox,' Bitterblue said, 'but I'm exhausted. It's time I went to bed.'

Then she walked back to her rooms and collected the keys. Going out again past her guards, dropping down the appropriate stairs, winding through the maze, she tried not to rush, because it was silly, only a hunch, and it was foolish to hope too hard.

Inside the room, she went to the tiny owl in the tapestry, lifted the bottom of the great, heavy, woven cloth, and crawled beneath it.

She couldn't see a thing and spent the first minute coughing at the dust. Eyes watering, nose itching like crazy, pressed up against the wall and half suffocated by art, she asked herself what in the blazes she expected to happen now: a door that swung open? A tunnel of light? Feel around, she thought. Po opened the door behind Katsa's tub by pressing on a tile. Feel the wall. Reach high! Leck was taller than you.

Feeling the wall, finding nothing but smooth wood, she grew disheartened, and also slightly embarrassed. What if someone intel ligent whose opinion mattered came into the room, saw the bulge in the hanging, and lifted it to find the queen in her robe groping idly at the wood of the wall? Or, worse, what if they assumed she was an intruder and began whacking at her through the hanging? What if—

Her finger hooked into a knot in the wood, very high, so high that she was on tiptoe when she found it. Stretching herself as tall as she could, Bitterblue pushed her finger farther into the hole. A click sounded, followed by a rolling noise. A space opened before her.

She had to crawl back into the room for her lantern. Once under the hanging again, she lifted her light. It illuminated a stone spiral staircase leading down.

Bitterblue gritted her teeth and began the descent, wishing she had a free hand to steady against the wall. The staircase straightened eventually to a long, stone, descending passage. Continuing on, she found that it curved in places and contained occasional steps leading down. It was difficult to keep track of where she was in relation to Leck's room.

When her lamp found a glowing design on the wall, she stopped to examine it. A painting, painted directly onto the stone. A pack of wolves, silver, gold, and palest pink, howling at a silver moon.

She knew better than to pass on by without trying. Setting her lantern on the floor, she ran her hand over the stone, searching for something, anything that might be anomalous. Her finger caught in a hole on one side of the painting. The shape of the hole was strange. Familiar. Bitterblue touched its edges and realized it was a keyhole.

Breathing shakily, she pulled the keys from the pocket of her robe. Separating the third key from the others, she slipped it into the lock and carefully turned it. A click sounded. The stone wall before her pushed forward.

Taking the lamp again, Bitterblue squeezed into a shallow, low-ceilinged sort of closet, with shelves lining the back wall. On the shelves were books bound in leather. She set the lamp on the floor. Pulling a book down at random, her whole body shaking now, Bitterblue knelt. The leather was a sort of folder enclosing loose papers. Opening the folder awkwardly with one hand, holding a sheet of paper to the lamp, she saw squiggles, strange dips, curves, and slashes.

Now she remembered it: her father's peculiar, squiggly writing. She'd thrown some of it into the fire once. She hadn't been able to read the letters then. Now she understood why.

More secrets in cipher, Bitterblue thought, breathing through the fact. My father wrote his secrets in cipher.

If no one Leck hurt is left to tell me what he did, if no one will tell me the secrets everyone's trying to hide, the secrets that trap everyone inside pain, perhaps it doesn't matter. For Leck can tell me himself. His secrets will tell me what he did to leave my kingdom so broken. And finally, I'll understand.

PART FOUR Bridges and Crossings

(November and December)

33

THE BOOKS NUMBERED thirty-five. Bitterblue needed help, fast; she needed Helda, Bann, and Giddon. And so, locking all doors behind her, she went to wake each of them up.

At her persistent knocking, three bleary people came to three doors, listened to her frantic explanation, then went to get dressed. 'Will you find my guard Holt?' she asked Bann, who leaned against his own door frame with no shirt on, looking like he would collapse unconscious on the floor if only she'd let him. 'We need him to pull down the wooden boards blocking my sitting room door and he has to do it quietly, because we've got to get the journals up into my rooms without anyone knowing, and for rot's sake, hurry up!'

When Holt arrived, Hava was with him, for Holt had been visiting his niece in the art gallery when Bann had found him. Bitterblue, Hava, Holt, Giddon, and Bann snuck down the stairs and into the maze with a scattering of lamps, a strange, silent, late-night search party. They glided around corners to Leck's door.

Bitterblue forgot to warn them; unlocking the door and pushing everyone in, she forgot to warn Holt and Hava that the room was full of Bellamew's sculptures. Hava, shocked at the sight of them, flickered in confusion, turning into a sculpture, then back to a girl.

'He destroyed them,' she said in a low, furious voice, holding her lantern close to one. 'He covered them with paint.'

'They're still beautiful,' Bitterblue said quietly. 'He tried to destroy them, but I think he failed, Hava. Look at them. I don't need your help with the books—stay here and spend time with them.'

Holt stood before the sculpture of the child growing wings and feathers. 'This is you, Hava,' he said. 'I remember.'

'I need your help, Holt,' said Bitterblue. 'Come with me.'

Holt took one long look around the room. His gaze lingered on the empty bed frame. The eyes he finally turned to Bitterblue made her a bit nervous, for there was something unsteady there that she would rather not see in the eyes of a man Graced with strength and known for unpredictable behavior. 'Holt?' she said, holding out her hand. 'Will you come with me?'

Holt took her hand. She led him, like a child, to the back of the room and up the steps, and showed him the boards nailed to her sitting room door. 'Can you pull them away, quietly, so that if any members of the Monsean Guard should be patrolling the maze, they won't overhear?'

'Yes, Lady Queen,' he said, grasping a board with both hands, then tugging on it gently, so that it came out of the wall with nothing more than a small scraping sound.