Chapter Forty-two
Upon their return to Ledra, Bitterblue and her delegation moved into a hotel.
This wasn’t customary for foreign dignitaries visiting Winterkeep, but Bitterblue was suing a few of the Ledra elite for openly lying to her in the course of trade, which made things awkward. She claimed that her evidence had been “mailed to her anonymously.” Since everyone knew her accusations to be founded, no one seemed prone to interfere.
Bitterblue’s advisers, who’d recently returned to Ledra, and her guards, who’d moved out of the ship to be with her, wandered around the hotel as if in a happy dream. Her advisers kept seeking Bitterblue out, then not knowing what to say. So she would invite them to eat cake with her, knowing that they just needed to sit with her for a while, looking at her, so that they could really believe that she was there. And she needed cake, so it served her purposes too.
They also accompanied her to dinners with the Ledra elite, who tried to one-up each other with how long she stayed at their tables and how much she liked their food. Or at least, that was the impression Bitterblue got. It surprised her, how much the elected leaders of this republic reminded her, at least superficially, of the nobility she contended with at home.
The delegation was renting the entire hotel. It made for empty, silent corridors and a slightly confused hotel staff, but Bitterblue needed the mental space it provided. Of course, it also meant that when a small fire broke out in the remote sitting room Hava used for herself, it took a while for anyone to respond to her calls.
When Bitterblue burst into the room, Giddon and several staff members on her heels, Hava was balanced on a crutch, trying to beat the flaming rug with a pillow.
“Hava!” cried Bitterblue. “Come away!”
“The notebooks!” Hava cried, resisting Bitterblue’s attempts to pull her off. “Linta Massera’s notebooks! They’re burning!”
“What? All of them?”
“I removed a couple of pages yesterday,” said Hava, beginning to cough violently. “The rest is gone.”
Consequently, when the Ledra Magistry arrived a few mornings later to ask whether the Monseans knew anything about the location of Linta’s missing notebooks, Hava handed them a bucket of burnt and sodden scraps, plus two perfectly preserved pages.
When the two pages turned out to be the instructions for mixing a chemical bath into which an egg could be submerged in order to degrade it, rendering it harmless, Bitterblue carefully avoided Giddon’s eyes. The whole thing was suddenly far too convenient.
“I’m so sorry,” Hava kept saying to the Magistry officers, using her Grace to make herself look fluttery and sweet.
“It’s all right, miss, really. It can’t be helped,” the Magistry officers kept responding, never quite noticing that their disinterest in challenging her was coming from the power her Grace had to slide their attention away from her.
The Magistry officers stayed for lunch. When they left, Hava did too, clunking out of the dining room and down the corridor on her crutches with small gasps. She wasn’t supposed to be relying so much on her crutches. It created a strain on her broken rib. But it was impossible to force Hava to keep still, impossible to impose any will upon her beside her own, so Bitterblue bit down on the words she wanted to say.
“Care to bet what Hava’s been up to?” she said quietly to Giddon.
“I’m hoping we’re about to find out,” he said, spreading butter and honey onto a slice of bread with the focus and precision of an artist. Giddon did things like that when he was pondering something else. He did it with his touch too, when they were together, rubbing Bitterblue’s shoulders or her neck unconsciously, but carefully, finding her tight, aching spots, while they talked or planned. It was definitely in her top ten favorite habits of his.
A few minutes later, they heard Hava’s crutches approaching again. She entered the dining room, lowered herself back into her chair with a small grunt of pain. Reached into her shirt and pulled out a thick pile of papers, which she handed to the queen.
Wordlessly, Bitterblue flipped through the pages. They were written in Hava’s handwriting, composed of diagrams and symbols Bitterblue didn’t understand, interspersed with stretches of Keepish.
“I copied them exactly,” Hava said. “Every picture, every page.”
Bitterblue cleared her throat. “And then,” she said, “you set the hotel on fire?”
“Hardly,” said Hava. “Just the rug.”
“You have a broken ankle and a broken rib. You stayed in that room, inhaling smoke, risking falling down—”
“You came when I knew you would.”
“Hava! You could have told us the plan.”
“I’m telling you now,” said Hava. Then she pushed herself up again and left the room.
Bitterblue sighed, then gathered the papers together, rolling them into a tube. She didn’t want them in her hands. They felt like a menace that might explode in her face. But they were hers now, and she was going to have to guard them, and decide what to do.
“Will I ever stop worrying about her?” she said, wishing that in addition to her criticisms of Hava, she’d remembered to say “Thank you.”
“Unlikely,” said Giddon, licking butter from his thumb.
“I keep secrets from her too,” Bitterblue said. “Things she should probably know.” For example, she hadn’t told Hava that blue foxes could read everyone’s minds and defied their bonded humans yet. She’d told Giddon, but was worried that telling Hava would break her promise to the fox. Nor did Hava know about Giddon, for the relationship was still so new, and so newly dear. Bitterblue didn’t have the armor yet to hold up against Hava’s sarcasm.
“You’ll tell her, when it’s time,” said Giddon gently.
“Yes,” said Bitterblue. “Speaking of which,” she added, her expression turning into something rueful. She didn’t want to do the next thing on their agenda today. “Should we go talk to Froggatt?”
* * *
—
They found Froggatt in the greenhouse on the hotel’s roof, staring at a tall, slender, pink lily.
“Would you join us for some tea and cake, Froggatt? Here among the flowers?” said Bitterblue, a suggestion that seemed to make him rapturously happy.
They sat at a small garden table. “We’re about to tell you something you must tell no one, Froggatt,” said Bitterblue. “Not even other members of my staff.”
Froggatt swelled at this honor. “Yes, Lady Queen?”
“Giddon and I are getting married.”