I miss you, said Giddon, with a small laugh that was really a sob. You’ve always told me what you think and feel and need. I’ve taken that for granted.
“What?” said Hava sharply.
“What?” he responded, startled.
“You laughed.”
“Oh. Private thoughts.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Of course I am,” he said, trying sarcasm. “Everything is about you, brat.”
Perversely, this made Hava smile, with a warmth that communicated to Giddon that her emotional blockade was over. “Good dinner party, hm?” she said.
“Oh, wonderful. Especially the part where the host’s daughter found you snooping in the host’s desk and you almost attacked her.”
“I bet she won’t tell anyone. She doesn’t seem to care about zilfium, or anything else that matters, so hopefully she’ll just assume I have light fingers and a bad temper and leave it at that.”
She was speaking in that non-caring tone that always impressed Giddon. He often pretended to be someone other than who he was in his Council work, but he almost always played someone likable. He had difficulty doing otherwise. Hava, in contrast, seemed to have no problem playing a role that left people thinking badly of her. Was it the shadows from his past that stopped him? Giddon had tortured a man for information once long ago, for King Randa, tied him up and hit him, and it hadn’t been a role. He remembered every noise that man had made. The man was probably still alive somewhere, remembering that experience. The people who thought badly of Giddon had reasons.
Giddon, said Bitterblue, in the gentle voice that meant it was time for him to stop wallowing.
All right. Giddon tried to bring himself back to the present. He breathed deeply, noticing the tiny, sharp flakes of snow that dove at his face. They were approaching a sprawling city beach dotted with the impromptu camps of travelers and traders, their carts and horses braced against the wind. A giant bonfire rose into the sky, surrounded by people warming their hands and laughing. Beyond the beach, Giddon could see the beginnings of the long harbor, the spires of masts, and the hulls of colorful ships.
“Have you noticed that a fox is following us?” said Hava. “Again?”
Every time Giddon saw a blue fox, he got the feeling, like a crawling on his skin, that it was following him, but he knew this was irrational. “Are you sure? There are so many of them.”
“This one keeps popping up, wherever we are,” Hava said. “I saw it once back on the cliff path too, near the farm. They don’t feel right to me. You know?”
“I find I’m always guarding my mind against them,” he said. “The way we do with mind readers back home, or Dellian monsters. I know it’s pointless, since they can’t read our minds. But I guess my instinct is too strong.”
Hava made a humphing noise. “I think I guard my mind against everyone and everything, always. Old habits.”
Both Bitterblue and Hava had worked to develop that habit as children, to protect themselves from the Grace of their father. Remembering this, Giddon’s mood softened. “They make me nervous,” he admitted.
“So, where are we going?” said Hava. “What’s the boating company that leased the Seashell called?”
“I have it here,” Giddon said, reaching into his coat pocket for a piece of paper. Finding it, but not finding the other item that was meant to be in that pocket, a small envelope he always kept there. Alarmed, he began to search all his pockets. When Hava said, “Well? What’s it called?” he ignored her, kept looking.
It was a thing he carried with him always, transferring it from pocket to pocket, like a talisman to remind him why he did the things he did. It contained a few small, ciphered notes. They were the notes Bitterblue wrote to him and left on her dinner table on the days when her responsibilities kept her from dinner, and Hava and Skye were elsewhere too. Instead of letting him arrive unexpectedly to an empty table, she always had his dinner served in her absence and left him a note to puzzle over. The cipher key would be something on the table, usually something she’d placed in an odd position. An upside-down fork meant “fork” was the key. A napkin folded into a glider meant “napkin” or “glider” was probably the key. Then the note would say something so typical that he would sit there laughing. It might say, “Apple cake on bookshelf,” so he would search behind the books for his dessert. It might say, “Why didn’t the bear wear socks? Answer hidden among rubies,” which would send him to the crown, which sat on its own table in the room. There, he would find another ciphered note that said, “Because he had bear feet.”
He’d kept every note she’d written him, and he kept his three or four favorites in the envelope in his pocket, always. And the envelope was gone. It was useless to keep looking. He’d been to so many places since the last time he’d checked for it: across the sky in the airship to the Cavenda house, the long walk back again, the journey this morning to the harbor. It could be anywhere.
“What’s wrong?” said Hava, who was watching him with rising impatience.
What was wrong was that Giddon was realizing, with a bright white clarity he’d never had before, that a person did not keep notes like that from a friend, carrying them around like something precious, like a treasure, for no reason. It wasn’t normal, it wasn’t a routine thing to do, and Giddon had never wanted to be Bitterblue’s confidant and counselor as she searched for a husband. He’d loved her. He’d wanted to be her husband. And he’d never said a word, never even tried. Why? Because he was a coward. And now she was dead. She’d died not knowing how cherished she was. He’d done every part of it wrong and now she was dead.
The numbness of his shock made it easier for him to moderate his expression. “Nothing,” he said, with supreme calm. “I lost something.”
“Okay,” said Hava. “Can I help you find it?”
“I expect it’s gone forever,” said Giddon stupidly.
“Giddon, seriously,” said Hava, scowling up into his face. “Did someone stab you with a tranquilizer and I missed it?” When he didn’t respond, she went so far as to wave a hand in front of his eyes.
“I can’t do this right now,” he said.
“You can’t do what? Walk along the harbor?”
“Hava,” he said. “I just can’t.”
Hava took him by both arms and nudged him, not exactly gently, backward. When his legs met the edge of a bench, Giddon sat. Hava sat beside him, studying his face. “What happened?”
Nearby, a blue fox was peering at them from behind a post, not even being subtle. When Giddon looked into Hava’s face, her features blurred and he blotted his eyes with his sleeve.