It’s the evidence you need, they told her. There’s a lock on their door.
Evidence?
Evidence that they were murdered, they told her. Our friend is big. She’s big enough to move ships. We want to help you humans, so you’ll help us. We know you need true things for your courts.
You know that? Lovisa said. How do you know that?
Why wouldn’t we know that? they said. We talk to humans. We’re part of your world. Some humans are our friends. Do you know the small human who lost the ring?
The queen? said Lovisa, incredulous.
They asked her, Can you come down to the water?
* * *
—
Lovisa walked north, to a place where steps in the cliff led down to a little beach. It was a different beach from the one where the ship was sitting. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that beach, for human voices had begun to sound down there, calls of amazement, shouts. “Did you see that? Did you hear it?” She didn’t want to be part of their speculation, their wonder. Their horror, when they discovered the bodies inside. Lovisa didn’t want to see any more bodies.
When she got down to the water, the silbercows were waiting for her, floating some distance from the shore. She didn’t know how to get close to them. She had no boat. When one of them swam up close to the beach, so close that Lovisa was frightened for its safety, she walked right into the water.
It was freezing. Aghast, she strode in up to her thighs, suspecting she was ruining her shoes, her trousers, her coat, and remembering, of course, that she no longer knew where the money would come from to buy new things. The Devrets, probably, which wasn’t right. But Lovisa was beyond that just now. She’d watched a sea monster—the silbercows had said it wasn’t the Keeper, but when she told her brothers this story, they would make it the Keeper—everyone would make it the Keeper—lift the Seashell out of the sea. It was just the sort of thing the Keeper would do. Who cared about her clothes? The ocean had shared a secret with her. A monster had reached out and delivered a miracle. This world kept wanting to be bigger than she was letting it. Why did she keep trapping herself inside small things?
Lovisa had never been so close to a silbercow before. Physically, it was little more than a dark shape rising from the water before her, but in her feelings and her mind, it was a great deal more. As it talked to her, she felt, to be honest, as if her brain were trying to rise out of her skull. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant feeling. Her body became awash in a sadness that she understood was the silbercow’s sadness. She began to cry, at the thought that her parents had done something to hurt this creature. I’m sorry, she started saying again. I’m sorry.
It wasn’t your fault, the silbercow said.
Maybe that was true. But Lovisa was beginning to understand that it was her legacy. I’m going to make up for it, she said, not knowing what it meant, but certain, in that moment, that it was true. I’m going to protect you.
I believe you’re going to try, said the silbercow. I can feel the fire in your heart.
Lovisa saw then that the silbercow was holding a tiny, hard ring in its mouth. She understood that she was supposed to take it. She held out her hand.
The silbercow dropped the ring into her hand. It was cold and wet and small. She understood that she was now tasked with returning it to the queen.
Then she understood something else. A sort of doubtful apology from the silbercow, on behalf of their monster friend, who was very unhappy. Unhappy about the ship? About the drowned humans? Lovisa wasn’t understanding this part entirely, but she did understand that the silbercow wanted to know if she had any . . . it was hard to believe, but the silbercow wondered if Lovisa had any sparkly baubles. Any shiny human thing she didn’t care about. If it could be worn as a ring, so much the better.
For the monster? Lovisa asked, thoroughly confused.
Yes.
The monster wants a sparkly bauble?
It would make her very happy.
From her state of mental chaos, Lovisa did an inventory of her person, because if the monster wanted a sparkly bauble, she wanted the monster to have a sparkly bauble. She had some snacks and one of Worthy’s milk rags in her pockets, all sodden now, but no baubles, and she wore no jewelry. Then she remembered something. Reaching into the front of her coat, she pulled the string with the attic room key over her head. She held it up, considering it. In the twilight, the purple stone sparkled and the metal of the key glimmered silver.
She felt a sort of relieved sigh coming from the silbercow, and considered that the key had a steel loop at the top. If someone really wanted to, they could wear it as a ring.
Or a necklace, the silbercow said, around one of her eye-stems.
Uncertain, but deciding, Lovisa held the key out to the silbercow, who took it gently in its mouth. Lovisa felt a thank-you, then the silbercow turned and took off. It had happened so fast, the relinquishing of that key. Lovisa looked for a sign of the silbercow streaking across the water, but it was gone.
Will you come talk to me again? she cried out desperately.
Yes, Lovisa Cavenda, said the silbercow, in a fading voice. You will be our friend.
* * *
—
Lovisa walked back to the city, dripping water, stomping her feet hard to warm them. The ends of her coat began to form a frozen sort of shield around her legs.
When she reached the tall, brightly lit hotel where the queen was staying, she stood outside for a moment, watching snowflakes hit its glass windows, then slide down like rain.
It had taken her so long to give up that key, the key to her cage. But it was a cage that no longer existed, because she’d destroyed it, by herself. Freeing Bitterblue was freeing herself. What would’ve happened if she hadn’t?
Now the key had moved on, to the bottom of the sea, where it belonged. It was someone else’s treasure. She’d received the Seashell in return, the missing link for the Magistry in the story of her parents’ crimes. Those two murders would be added to the charges against her father.
There was more. Lovisa had seen something today. She had a story to tell. She thought it might even be an inspiring story. “The Keeper is a fairy tale,” she could say, “but what I saw was real. Are you so sure that the silbercows are making things up?”
What if her story could make people want to hear new voices, new ideas? What if Lovisa was discovering that she agreed with Nev that silbercows should have a voice in Parliament? What if she made it a political experiment, to figure out what words, what way of telling her story, would get other people to think so too? She was sixteen. That was still young, wasn’t it? She’d already wasted a lot of time. What if she started now? Who could help her? Gorga? Mara? Nev? How long would it take her to learn all she needed to know?