“Hava!” said Froggatt in a scandalized tone, his first contribution to the conversation. Poor Froggatt. Giddon guessed he’d been crying this morning too; his eyes were puffy.
“Don’t you ‘Hava’ me,” Hava snarled at him.
“Hava,” said Giddon tiredly, before he could stop himself.
“Oh, Hava asks a valid question,” said Quona. “I am, without a doubt, not what my family hoped I would be. I’m about as qualified to be a politician or an airship magnate as I would guess you are, Hava, to be Queen of Monsea.”
Quona had no idea that Hava, like Bitterblue, was the daughter of King Leck, but it was the sort of offhand remark that could send Hava running. Giddon glanced at Hava nervously.
“But don’t misunderstand: I’m very proud of my family,” Quona continued. “Like a true Scholar, Sara is devoted to the protection of the environment. She’s not the first Varana to be prime minister, nor will she be the last. And our family invented the airship, which is a zilfium-free technology and the fastest means of transportation in the world. The mixture of gases that keeps airships buoyant, varane, is named after us. Unlike zilfium, it’s environmentally safe. So,” she said, switching topics. “What do you all intend to do today? How can I help? No one will bother you. Keepish society knows not to come to my house without invitation.”
“We have letters to write to our colleagues at home,” said Froggatt, “and meetings to set up here. We believe the queen would have wanted us to move forward with her diplomatic intentions.”
“Good men,” said Quona, nodding grimly at Froggatt, Barra, and Coran. “And you?” she said, considering Giddon and Hava. It was interesting that she’d intuited, correctly, that the advisers were one team, Giddon and Hava another. Froggatt, Barra, and Coran knew little about the zilfium trick that had been played upon Bitterblue and nothing about her suspicions regarding the sinking of the Seashell. Nothing about Katu, either. The advisers were here to behave like diplomats. Giddon and Hava, in contrast, were going to sniff out those zilfium importers, and choke them.
And yet, Giddon also had letters to write, to his friends, the people who’d loved Bitterblue the most, besides him.
He couldn’t write those letters yet.
“We intend to visit Periwinkle, the Lienid envoy, today,” he said. “At dinner last night, he suggested we stop by.” Periwinkle, who had dripped with tears all throughout dinner, would recognize the surnames on Bitterblue’s list of importers, and maybe he would know the given names that went with them.
“Excellent,” said Quona. “The office of the Lienid envoy is in the Keep. Would you like to fly there in my airship? Avoid the ambles?”
Giddon didn’t know what the ambles were, nor did he particularly care. Last night, they’d traveled to this house in Quona’s airship. How surreal it had been to float across the sky in a wooden ship attached to a balloon, with sails tacking and jibing like they did on water. So windy and cold, with sudden drops and climbs, as if the air was composed of invisible hills. When it had been time to land, one of Quona’s fliers had shot some sort of tiny anchor, attached to a line, into a net on Quona’s roof. A guard on the roof had disattached the anchor from the net, then attached a dock line to the anchor. The fliers had hauled the dock line up into the airship, then kept hauling on it to bring the airship down to the dock. It had been unlike anything Giddon had ever experienced. You would’ve hated it, Giddon thought to Bitterblue, suddenly furious that she’d missed the wonder of flying. She would’ve been amazed by it too. She would’ve asked a million questions, while clinging to Giddon and Hava and shrieking. She should have been allowed to have all those feelings.
Giddon could sense that his face had turned to marble. “Is it a long walk to the Keep?” he asked, trying to banish the anger from his tone.
“Perhaps an hour,” she said.
“We’ll walk,” said Hava, in a short, unfriendly voice.
“Shall I draw you a map?” she said.
“We have a map,” said Hava.
“If a fox were bonded to me,” said Quona, “I could ask that fox to direct you there.”
“We have a map,” Hava repeated sharply.
“I understand,” said Quona, an innocuous comment that nonetheless caused Hava to stand up and stalk from the room. The cat that had been lying on Giddon’s foot stirred, then moved away, leaving him feeling untethered.
“I’m sorry,” Giddon said weakly. “She’s very upset.”
“Of course she is,” said Quona. “Aggression is a natural tactic in her situation, if ineffective. And how are you feeling this morning? I understand that you were in the water yesterday for a very long time.”
“I’m fine,” said Giddon, who didn’t want to remember.
“Are you one of those people who pretends to be stronger than he is?” said Quona. “That’s a reasonable tactic too, of course. One must choose a path, then stick to it.”
Punctured, Giddon spent a moment carefully folding his napkin. He blinked, baffled by his new inability to control his tears.
You are not pretending, Bitterblue told him. You are strong.
You don’t see inside me. You don’t see my small, mean thoughts.
I am inside you, silly, she told him.
* * *
—
“I hate this place,” said Hava as they walked to the Keep. “And I hate her.”
The footpath to the city led first past the Cliff Farm, which, despite its beautiful, glass-windowed barns, smelled earthy and sour, just like farms at home. With a slow, deep breath, Giddon made a promise to himself to get through this day without saying “Hava!” reproachfully more than three times, including the time he’d already done so at breakfast.
He said, “She is a bit—”
“Braggy?” interrupted Hava. “Cat-obsessed? Nosy? I’m not going to be queen.”
Giddon had been waiting for this. “Hava,” he said, “I promise that won’t happen.”
“I won’t do it,” she said insistently. A tear ran down her cheek, then vanished. Giddon recognized the signs, the strange wavering in the air if you knew to watch for it, his own sudden disinterest in looking at her too closely. She was using her Grace, probably hiding more tears.
He swallowed the gorge that rose sometimes, if you were too aware of what she was doing. Then he turned back to admire Quona’s house, as if it interested him, as if he weren’t trying to give her a moment to gather her composure. The house clung to the cliff, looking like part of the landscape. Its windows gleamed. On the roof, above a single, small window, sat Quona’s airship. Its balloon was long and gray, decorated with many tentacles, a representation of that creature that had some significance in Winterkeep. Some legendary sea monster? Giddon couldn’t remember.