Now Froggatt flushed. “But, Lady Queen!”
“I don’t want to hear a word about him being a disinherited ex-lord from the Middluns,” said Bitterblue.
“My concern, Lady Queen, is less that he’s a disinherited ex-lord from the Middluns and more that the reason he’s a disinherited ex-lord from the Middluns is that he spends his time crossing the seven kingdoms—”
“Seven Nations,” Bitterblue corrected.
“Seven Nations, which are no longer the seven kingdoms precisely because your proposed future husband is a renegade who, along with his renegade friends, captures and deposes monarchs! And you are a queen!”
“Yes,” said Bitterblue. “We agree it’s awkward. But no relationship is without its challenges, Froggatt. This is going to happen. I’ve chosen you as our ally here at the beginning because someone in a queen’s circle should know her marital intentions, and because we’ll need support when we make the news public. Was I wrong to trust you?”
Whatever Froggatt had been going to say next, he swallowed it. “Of course not, Lady Queen.”
“You understand that you have no license to try to talk me—or Giddon—out of it?”
“I understand that you’ve made up your mind, Lady Queen.”
“Good.”
“And I hope you’ll both be very happy,” he added belatedly, perhaps after noticing the twitch of Giddon’s mouth across the table.
“Thank you,” said Giddon gravely.
“Lady Queen,” said Froggatt, suddenly anxious, “are you really all right? Your advisers can tell when you’ve been crying.”
Bitterblue had, indeed, been allowing herself a lot of tears recently. “I’m recovering from an ordeal, Froggatt,” she said, remembering the word Katu’s doctor had used. “The last few weeks have reminded me of a lot of old things. Sad things. You understand?”
“Yes, of course I do, Lady Queen,” said Froggatt, who’d worked in her father’s court before he’d ever worked in hers.
“It’s productive crying,” she said. “I’m making progress. Though if I’m being honest, my head and neck ache from it.”
“Have you been remembering to stretch before crying?” said Giddon.
Froggatt turned to regard Giddon with an indignant and incredulous expression.
“It’s also good to do a little warm-up cry before you go all out,” said Giddon, which sent Bitterblue into giggles and finally brought her up out of her chair, taking his hand and announcing she had things to do, because (she didn’t announce this part) she wanted to get into bed with him.
Froggatt watched them together, a kind of aggrieved confusion on his face.
* * *
—
The next challenge surprised Bitterblue. She wasn’t surprised that in her meetings with the Ledra elite, more than one Industrialist casually mentioned Benni’s upstanding character, even expressing that it was hard to believe he would build an illegal weapon, imprison his own brother-in-law, kill a boy, or abduct a queen.
“And yet he did,” she would respond calmly.
But she was surprised at what one person asked: “Did you ever see him, Lady Queen? According to the parts of his defense that I’ve heard, you never actually saw him.”
“Certainly I saw him. Most recently, I saw him trying to hide evidence in Torla’s Neck,” Bitterblue replied.
But later that night, as she waited in her bedroom for Giddon to arrive, Bitterblue considered that in fact, she hadn’t seen Benni hiding any evidence. She’d stabbed him before he’d had a chance. Nor had she seen him during her kidnapping. She’d been unconscious when his airship had snatched her out of the sea. She’d been unconscious from a drugged drink—given to her by Ferla’s guard—when he’d murdered that poor boy. The fox had told her Benni was guilty, and she believed the fox. But the fox’s involvement was a secret she’d sworn to keep. She had every intention of honoring her promise to uphold the secrets of foxkind.
The truth was that if she was asked to testify in court against Benni, there was little Bitterblue could honestly report, beyond inferences. And if Benni decided to claim that Ferla had coerced him, or threatened his children, her inferences couldn’t contradict that.
The guards from Torla’s Neck who might have served as witnesses against Benni had fled. The young woman who’d brought Bitterblue her food in the attic had escaped to Kamassar in the Tima airship. Linta Massera was dead. The Kamassarians who’d scuttled the Seashell were gone, and anyway, there was no hard evidence that the sinking of the Seashell had been anything but an accident. The Magistry wasn’t considering it a crime.
Even Katu seemed content to think Ferla was his abductor. He knew from experience that Ferla could be ruthless, while Benni was a nice guy. And the Devret guards had reported that Ferla, not Benni, had gone out one night, bribing them to keep quiet. A Graceling named Trina, Graced with finding things, had come forward, claiming that Ferla had tried to hire her to locate human remains in the rubble of the burnt Cavenda house.
Bitterblue was gazing through the starmaker at the fire in her grate when Giddon snuck in.
“Hi,” he said, closing the door with a quiet click.
“Hi,” she said gloomily, swinging the starmaker to the lamp in his hands. Bitterblue loved the starmaker. It gave one part of her mind something nice to do while another part tried to solve problems.
Giddon set the lamp down and climbed under the covers. “What is it?” he said, pulling her against him and holding her in that way that always made her feel treasured, the same way using his gift, the starmaker, made her feel treasured.
“I don’t want Lovisa to have to testify in court against her own father,” she said. “I don’t want that entire burden to fall to her. But she’s the only reliable witness, even though we all know he’s guilty. I know things the fox told me that it kills me I can’t share.”
He breathed evenly against her hair for a while, thinking about it. “Are you considering exposing the fox?”
“No! Of course not. I can’t do that.”
“Are you considering . . . something else?”
Now Bitterblue took a moment. “If I pretended to have heard or seen something while I was in their attic,” she said, “I don’t think anyone would doubt me.”
Giddon’s voice was unhappy. “I don’t think so either.”
Bitterblue was obscurely ashamed of her next question. “Giddon? How terrible would it be to use one’s power as a queen to make up evidence in a foreign court? Evidence that everyone would believe?”