A man near the bar smashed his cup over the head of another man. In the time it took Bitterblue to register her surprise, a brawl had erupted. She watched in amazement as the entire room seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing. The tiny woman on the bar used her advantage of height to deliver a few admirable kicks.
At the edge of the brawl, where a civilized minority was trying to keep out of the way, someone knocked against someone brownhaired, who pitched his cider onto Bitterblue's front.
'Oh, ratbuggers. Look, lad, I'm awfully sorry,' Brown Hair said, grabbing a dubious bit of towel from a table and using it to dab at Bitterblue, much to her alarm. She recognized him. He was the companion of the purple-eyed Graceling thief from the previous night, whom she now recognized as well, beyond Brown Hair, launching himself cheerily into the melee.
'Your friend,' Bitterblue said, pushing Brown Hair's hands away. 'You should help your friend.'
He came back at her determinedly with the towel. 'I expect he's having a marvelous—time,' he said, ending on a note of bewilderment as he uncovered a corner of braid under Bitterblue's hood. His eyes dropped to her chest, where, apparently, he found enough evidence to elucidate the situation.
'Great rivers,' he said, snatching his hand back. He focused for the first time on her face, with no great success, for Bitterblue pulled her hood even lower. 'Forgive me, miss. Are you all right?'
'I'm perfectly fine. Let me pass.'
The Graceling and the man trying to kill the Graceling bashed into Brown Hair from behind, wedging Brown Hair more firmly against Bitterblue. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, with a lopsided face and nice hazel eyes. 'Allow my friend and me to escort you safely from this place, miss,' he said.
'I don't need escort. I just need you to let me by.'
'It's past midnight and you're small.'
'Too small for anyone to bother with.'
'If only that were the way of things in Bitterblue City. Just give me a moment to collect my rather overly enthusiastic friend,' he said as he was buffeted again from behind, 'and we'll see you get home. My name is Teddy. His is Saf, and he isn't really the blockhead he seems just now.'
Teddy turned and waded heroically into the fray, and Bitterblue scuttled along the room's perimeter, making her escape. Outside, knives gripped in both hands, she ran, cutting through a graveyard, slipping into an alleyway so narrow that her shoulders touched the sides.
Her mind tried to tick off streets and landmarks from the map she'd memorized, but it was difficult on true ground, rather than paper. Her vague direction was south. Slowing to a walk, she entered a street of buildings that seemed broken all to pieces and decided never again to put herself in a situation in which she had to run with so much change in her boots.
Some of these buildings looked as if they'd been cannibalized for their wood. A shape in a gutter that formulated itself into a corpse startled her, then scared her even more when it snored. A man who smelled dead but apparently wasn't. A hen snoozed against his chest, his arm curled around it protectively.
When she came upon a whole new storytelling place, she knew somehow what it was. It had the same setup as the other place, a door in an alley, people passing in and out, and two tough-looking characters standing at the door with arms crossed.
Bitterblue's body decided for her. The watchdogs loomed but didn't stop her. Inside the door, steps led down into the earth, to another door that, when opened, dropped her into a room glowing with light, smelling of cellars and cider, and warm with the hypnotic voice of another storyteller.
Bitterblue bought a drink.
The story was, of all things, about Katsa. It was one of the horrible true stories from Katsa's childhood, when Katsa's uncle Randa, king of the seven kingdoms' most central kingdom, the Middluns, had used her for her fighting skill, forcing her to kill and maim his enemies on his behalf.
Bitterblue knew these stories; she'd heard them from Katsa herself. Parts of this storyteller's version were correct. Katsa had hated having to kill for Randa. But other parts were exaggerated or untrue. The fights in this story were more sensational, more bloody than Katsa had ever allowed them to become, and Katsa was more melodramatic than Bitterblue could imagine her ever being. Bitterblue wanted to yell at this storyteller for getting Katsa wrong, yell in Katsa's defense, and it confused her that the crowd seemed to love this wrong version of Katsa. To them, that Katsa was real.
AS BITTERBLUE APPROACHED the castle's eastern wall that night, she noticed a few things at once. First, two of the lanterns atop the wall had gone out, leaving a section in such pitch darkness that Bitterblue glanced around the street, suspicious, and found that her suspicions were justified. The streetlamps along that stretch had also gone out. Next, she saw movement, nearly imperceptible, midway up the dark, flat wall. A moving shape— surely a person?—that stilled its movement as a member of the Monsean Guard marched past above. The movement started up again once the guard had gone.
Bitterblue realized that she was watching a person climb the east castle wall. She stepped into the seclusion of a shop doorway and tried to work out whether she should start shouting now, or wait until the perpetrator had made it to the top of the high wall, where he would be stuck, and the guards would be more likely to be able to catch him.
Except that the person didn't climb onto the wall. He stopped climbing just below the top—just below a small stone shadow that Bitterblue assumed, from its placement, was one of the many gargoyles that balanced on ledges or hung over the edge to stare at the ground below. A sort of scraping noise commenced that she couldn't identify, then stopped, momentarily, as the guard passed again above. Then started up again. This went on for quite some time. Bitterblue's mystification was turning to boredom when suddenly the person said, 'Oof,' a cracking noise followed, and the person slid, in a somewhat-controlled fall, down the wall again, with the gargoyle. A second person, whom Bitterblue hadn't noticed until this point, moved in the shadows at the base of the wall and caught the first person, more or less, though a grunt and a series of whispered curses suggested that one of them had gotten the worst of it. The second figure produced some sort of sack into which the first figure lowered the gargoyle, and then, sack over the shoulder of the first figure's back, they snuck away together.
They passed directly in front of Bitterblue, shrinking back against her doorway. She recognized them easily. They were the pleasant brown-haired fellow, Teddy, and his Graceling friend, Saf.
4
'LADY QUEEN,' SAID Thiel sternly the next morning. 'Are you even paying attention?'
She wasn't paying attention. She was trying to come up with a casual way to broach an unapproachable topic.
'I daresay that if I asked you to describe the last five things you've signed, Lady Queen, you'd be at a loss.'
What Thiel didn't understand was that this kind of work required no attention. 'Three charters for three coastal towns,' Bitterblue said, 'a work order for a new door to be fitted to the vault of the royal treasury, and a letter to my uncle, the King of Lienid, requesting him to bring Prince Skye when he comes.'
Thiel cleared his throat a bit sheepishly. 'I stand corrected, Lady Queen. It was your unhesitant signing of that last that led me to wonder.'
'Why should I hesitate? I like Skye.'
'Do you?' said Thiel, then hesitated himself. 'Really?' he added, beginning to look so thoroughly pleased about things that Bitterblue began to regret goading him, for that was what she was doing.
'Thiel,' she said. 'Are your spies good for nothing? Skye favors men, not women, and certainly not me. Understand? The worst is that he's practical, so he might even marry me if we asked him. Maybe that would be fine with you, but it wouldn't with me.'
'Oh,' Thiel said with obvious disappointment. 'That is a relevant piece of information, Lady Queen, if it's true. Are you certain?'
'Thiel,' she said impatiently, 'he's not secretive about it. Ror himself has recently come to know. Haven't you wondered why Ror has never suggested the match?'
