Bitterblue

It was deeply satisfying, the workings of the castle around her. When she crossed the great courtyard in cold that sliced through her, she saw Saf on his platform, and workers clearing the ice from the drains. She saw snow falling onto the glass and meltwater pouring into the fountain. In the middle of the night in the corridors, men and women shined the floors on their knees with soft cloths while snow piled on the ceilings above them. She began to recognize the people she passed. No progress was made in the search for a witness to the red dictionary delivery, but when Bitterblue visited Death in the library, she learned the new alphabet, watched him draw alphabet grids and letter frequency diagrams, and helped him keep track of the numbers. 'They call their language by a name we might pronounce as 'Dellian,' Lady Queen. And they—or, at any rate, Leck—calls ours, more or less, 'Gracelingian.''

'Dellian, like the false name of the river? Like the River Dell?'

'Yes, Lady Queen.'

'And Gracelingian? The name of our language is 'Gracelingian'?!'

'Yes.'

Even Madlen's work of articulating skeletons, which had taken over the infirmary laboratories and one of the patient wards, comforted Bitterblue. These bones were the truth of something Leck  had done, and Madlen was trying to return them to themselves. It felt, to Bitterblue, like a way of showing respect.

'How is your arm, Lady Queen?' Madlen asked her, holding what looked like a handful of ribs, staring at them as if they might speak to her.

'Better,' Bitterblue said. 'And kneading the bread grounds me.'

'There's power in touching things, Lady Queen,' said Madlen, echoing something Bitterblue herself had once thought. Madlen held the ribs out for Bitterblue to take. Bitterblue took them, feeling their peculiar smoothness. Tracing a raised line on one.

'That rib broke once, and rehealed, Lady Queen,' said Madlen.

'Your own arm, where the bone broke, is probably a bit like that.'

Bitterblue knew Madlen was right: There was power in touching things. Holding this once-broken bone, she felt the pain its person had felt when it broke. She felt the sadness of a life that had ended too soon, and of a body that had been dumped as if it meant nothing; she felt her own death, which would happen someday. There was a sharp sadness in that too. Bitterblue had no peace with the notion of dying.

In the bakery, leaning over the bread dough, pushing and shaping it into an elastic thing, she began to find clarity on one point:

Like Death, Bitterblue also had a taste for difficult—impossible—slow—messy work. She would figure out how to be queen, slowly, messily. She could reshape what it meant to be queen, and reshaping what it meant to be queen would reshape the kingdom.

And then, one day at the very start of December, as she pushed her tired arms to their daily limit, she looked up from the baker's table. Death stood before her. She didn't need to ask. From the luminous look on his face, she knew.

35

IN THE LIBRARY, Death handed her a piece of paper.

'The key is ozhaleegh,' said Bitterblue, the pronunciation awkward in her mouth.

'Yes, Lady Queen.'

'What does that word mean?'

'It means monster, Lady Queen, or beast. Aberration, mutant.'

'Like him,' Bitterblue whispered.

'Yes, Lady Queen. Like him.'

'The top line is the regular alphabet,' said Bitterblue. 'The six subsequent alphabets began with the six letters that spell the word ozhaleegh.'

'Yes.'

'To decipher the first letter of the first word in a passage, we use alphabet number one. For the second letter, alphabet number two, and so on. For the seventh letter, we go back to alphabet number one.'

'Yes, Lady Queen. You understand it perfectly.'

'Isn't it rather complicated for a journal, Death? I use a similar ciphering technique in my letters to King Ror, but my letters are brief, and perhaps I write one or two a month.'

'It wouldn't have been terribly difficult to write, Lady Queen, but it would have been a tangle to try to reread. It does seem a bit extreme, especially since presumably no one else spoke the Dellian language.'

'He overdid everything,' said Bitterblue.

'Here, let's take the first sentence of this book,' said Death, pulling the closest book forward and copying down the first line:

'Deciphered, it reads—'

Both Death and Bitterblue scribbled on Death's blotter. Then they compared their results:

'Are those real words?' asked Bitterblue.

'Yah weensah kahlah ahfrohsahsheen ohng khoh nayzh yah hahntaylayn dahs khoh neetayt hoht,' Death said aloud. 'Yes, Lady Queen. 'It means . . .' He screwed his lips tight, thinking. ''The winter gala approaches and we haven't the candles we need.' I've had to make some guesses about verb endings, Lady Queen, and their sentence structure differs from ours, but I believe that's accurate.'

Touching her deciphered scribbles, Bitterblue whispered the strange Dellian words. In places, they sounded like her own language, but not quite: yah weensah kahlah, the winter gala. They felt like bubbles in her mouth: beautiful, breathy bubbles. 'Now that you've cracked the cipher,' she said, 'should you try to memorize all thirty-five volumes before you start translating?'

'In order to memorize so much, Lady Queen, I'd need to decipher as I read. As long as I'm doing that, I may as well complete the translation as well, so that you have something to look at.'

'I hope it isn't thirty-five books about party supplies,' she said.

'I'll spend the afternoon translating, Lady Queen,' he said, 'and bring you the results.'

HE ENTERED HER sitting room that night, while she was eating a late dinner with Helda, Giddon, and Bann. 'Are you all right, Death?' Bitterblue asked him, for he looked—well, he looked old and miserable again, without the glow of triumph he'd had earlier in the day.

He handed her a small sheaf of paper wrapped in leather. 'I leave it to you, Lady Queen,' he said grimly.

'Oh,' Bitterblue said, understanding. 'Not party supplies, then?'

'No, Lady Queen.'

'Death, I'm sorry. You know you don't have to do this.'

'I do, Lady Queen,' he said, turning to leave. 'You do too.'

A moment later, the outer doors closed behind him. Looking at the leather in her hands, she wished that he hadn't gone so soon.

Well, none of it would ever end if she was too afraid for it to begin. She pulled at the tie, pushed the cover aside, and read the opening line.

Little girls are even more perfect when they bleed.

Bitterblue slapped the cover over the page again. For a moment, she sat there. Then, raising her eyes to each of her friends in turn, she said, 'Will you stay with me while I read this?'

'Yes, of course,' was the response.