“What did they do to you?” she cried.
“Well, my dear,” he said lightly, resting a tentative hand on her shoulder, as if steadying himself. “I was attacked while I was diving. Next thing I knew, I woke up here.”
“While you were diving! You mean, you were attacked underwater?”
“Yes. I was diving for the Seashell. You know the Seashell?”
“Yes, but how did you know about it?”
“I saw a strange thing at sea, through a glass, the very same day the Seashell disappeared,” he said. “An airship lifting people out of a lifeboat.”
“Is that so strange?” said Lovisa. “It sounds like a rescue.”
“The last person who left the lifeboat took an ax to its bottom,” said Katu.
“Oh,” said Lovisa, her heart sinking.
“Then the airship passed close by me,” Katu said. “I heard snatches of conversation in Kamassarian and I thought to myself, This is a Kamassarian mystery. They saw me. I tried to turn my craft so they couldn’t read her name and figure out who I was. But then the balloon shifted in the light. I recognized it.”
“It was my airship,” said Lovisa.
“Well, your parents’ airship,” Katu said with a small smile. “I certainly didn’t think to myself, That Lovisa is up to something.”
“My father.”
“Or your mother,” he said grimly.
“Your own sister?”
“My sister presumably trapped me in our childhood prison,” he said, “alone, for months. Recently, they started feeding me more, and giving me my favorite candy.”
“Your favorite candy!”
“Samklavi,” he said.
“Samklavi!” said Lovisa, who heard herself repeating things stupidly but couldn’t help it. A few weeks ago, she’d watched her furious mother hand her father a wallet of samklavi. “I think my mother sent you the samklavi, via my father!”
“Well,” Katu said, with a noise like a snort. “Despite that act of magnanimity, I can’t say I’m moved by ties of sibling loyalty just now.”
“My mother is dead,” said Lovisa.
Katu went still, all the light fading from his eyes. He tucked his chin to his chest, put his hands into the pockets of Lovisa’s coat. Then, to his own patent amazement, he extracted his ruby ring. “What on earth?” he cried.
Suddenly Nev shouted at Lovisa to return to the sheet rope to haul Hava up. “I’ll be a minute, Katu,” she said. But once Hava was back on solid ground, she had to help with Giddon. By the time Lovisa returned to Katu, he’d curled himself into a shivering ball. When she touched his shoulder, he recoiled.
“Quick,” she cried, alarmed at the transformation. “He’s ill!”
Davvi, Liv the cook, and Ella the maid came running, Davvi lifting Katu into his arms like a child, carrying him toward the house. Behind them, Nev and Roni the housekeeper supported Hava between them, headed in the same direction. Giddon and the queen followed, so Lovisa tagged along too, alone, cold. Liv and Ella were in quite a state about Katu. They kept exclaiming their wonderment, unable to believe what had happened to him. When a guard came stumbling out of the barn, clearly dizzy and concussed, Liv turned on him, shrieking vitriol, accusing him of having known, of having perpetuated an outrage against the Cavenda family. Tears were practically flying from her face. Lovisa watched her with a kind of fascination, wondering what would happen if she started screaming and crying, flinging tears around at the outrage of it all. Would it make her feel different? More certain of what was true?
She’d thrown an egg and killed Linta Massera and two guards. That was true. She didn’t want to think about it.
Giddon went into the barn, came out with horse tackle, and began binding the hands and feet of the guards, whose bodies, in various states of consciousness, seemed scattered across the grounds and house. Everyone else gathered in the sitting room, where Nev began to give orders about how to tend to Katu and Hava. Nev, an animal doctor, probably knew what she was doing. Maybe a human was like a tiny, upright, small-nosed, hairless horse?
Lovisa heard herself having these thoughts and tried to focus. Her body hurt, so much. The explosion had thrown her, then the crater had opened and she’d felt herself sliding, caught that pillar, clung to it forever, expecting at every moment for it to break off and plummet into the hole, bringing her with it. All the muscles in her arms and hands ached, her entire body felt like a giant bruise, and her ears were ringing. Her mouth tasted like blood.
Katu lay on a sofa near the big sitting room windows, shivering, but lucid. So Lovisa stood beside him, holding his hand. He’d put his ring back on. It slid back and forth on his skinny thumb. Lovisa tried to imagine refusing food to one of her own brothers. She couldn’t. It was unimaginable.
Hava, on a sofa nearby, seemed in good spirits. Probably because Nev had told her she wasn’t going to lose her foot. “Your ankle is broken,” Nev said, “and so, I think, is one of your ribs,” and Hava laughed, a strange laugh that turned into a high note of pain, but a laugh, nonetheless.
With small gasps, Hava told the story of how Lovisa had thrown the explosive egg. “You saved my life, Lovisa,” she said flatly, and then everyone was looking at Lovisa, who didn’t want the attention.
“I killed Linta Massera and two guards,” she said.
“I’m the one who pulled the pin,” said Hava. “I almost killed you.” Then she went on to describe how Giddon had lifted the ladder away from her foot. “I was briefly confused when he started stripping,” she said.
“He didn’t strip for me,” Katu mused, sounding hurt. The queen’s giggles rang out like bells, then Bitterblue left Hava’s side for a moment, coming to Katu. She leaned down and kissed his forehead.
“Welcome back, Katu,” Bitterblue said quietly.
“I’ve never been gladder to see you,” Katu said, giving her the gift of his warmest smile, which made Lovisa’s heart hurt. When he did that, he looked like himself, and grief flooded her for all that had happened to him.
Bitterblue returned to Hava.
“The queen looks thin,” said Katu. “Has she been ill?”
“It’s a long story,” said Lovisa.
“Is she all right?”
“She’s high on rauha just now, but yes, she’s fine. Wonderful, really,” said Lovisa, with that familiar burst of resentment. “She’s in love with Giddon. They’re disgusting together.”
Katu closed his eyes. He seemed to shrink, becoming distant and subdued. Every time he cut himself off like that, he left her alone with these foreigners who kept breaking into rapid Lingian when they spoke to one another, straining her tired mind.