Mostly she asks me about Nev, said the kit. I’m supposed to report whenever I can and tell her if Nev is safe. But I also tell her if others are safe, including Lovisa.
Why would she care if Lovisa is safe?
I don’t think she likes Lovisa’s parents. She doesn’t like a lot of the students’ parents.
Is Lovisa safe?
How would I know? said the kit. At least she’s not having sex with a horrible boy!
This was a waste of time. The fox ran back home on numb paws, the journey long and cold. He climbed into his bed again, relieved to find the house quiet, no fox visitors, no new dramas. Ferla lay twisted in her blankets, stilled by the effects of a soporific tea that brought unconsciousness, but not true rest. She would wake with a spinning mind, trying to find her way out of the trap she found herself in, thinking confused thoughts about her husband, her daughter. Grasping at her options for eliminating the problem of the queen.
The fox shivered, unable to sleep. Like everyone else, he didn’t know what he was going to do. And he had the sense that he was running out of time.
Chapter Twenty-six
Giddon was going to jump out of his own skin.
Every moment he spent neither talking to silbercows nor getting clear, hard answers to any of his questions was torture. Quona had returned before he and Hava were able to get into the locked room in her attic. They needed to know what Mikka and Brek had discovered in the north. But Quona never seemed to leave the house when they were home, and no matter how many parties or dinners they went to—no matter how much they hinted or nudged—no one seemed to have anything relevant to share.
The night of Sara Varana’s party in the Keep, it was impossible to step into the entrance hall and not look straight up at the glass dome above. Impossible not to admire it.
“Do you suppose that if all the lights were out,” Giddon said, “one could lie on the floor and watch the stars move across the sky?”
“Whatever,” Hava said. “There’s Arni Devret. I’m going to see what he knows about the north.” And she stumped off, leaving Giddon unaccountably grateful for her roughness, because it kept him from feeling too much. His star question had been the sort of thing he would’ve asked Bitterblue. He’d said it without thinking, and he’d broken his own heart with it.
From Arni, Hava learned that more than a dozen prominent Ledran families had property in the north and maybe half of them had houses on cliffs above the sea. Giddon learned from Periwinkle that Mikka and Brek had gone north on foot. It had been one of Mikka’s exploratory adventures.
“Mikka invited me to join them,” said Perry, beginning to tear up again. “Of course I declined. I went out with them often enough to know how it would be: no clear agenda; no concern about the existence—or lack—of inns; climbing and slipping and sliding and all manner of nonsense. Oh, how I miss that fool,” he said, mopping his face.
“Do you know where they went, exactly?” asked Giddon, tactfully handing him a handkerchief.
“I do not.”
“Do you know what sights they saw?”
“Probably every rock between here and Kamassar,” said Perry, blowing his nose.
Suppressing a sigh, Giddon moved off to talk to Quona as soon as he politely could, not because he wanted to talk to Quona, but because Quona was talking to the Estillan envoy, Cobal. Not that Giddon wanted to talk to Cobal either, but he knew he should be curious about what they discussed when they were together.
“A poodle!” exclaimed Quona as he joined them. “Hello, Giddon! Having fun?”
“So much fun. What’s a poodle?” asked Giddon, who didn’t know the Keepish word.
“A mid-sized, good-natured, fluffy dog,” said Quona. “Cobal is trying to decide what kind of Keepish dog to send home to his children in Estill.” Then Quona went on to enumerate all the advantages and disadvantages of poodles relative to other breeds of dog, while Cobal smirked at Giddon as if enjoying the impatience he suspected Giddon felt.
It was that kind of night. And it was followed by that kind of week, for in the hopes of hearing the right clue from the right person, they accepted one dinner invitation after another. They got a lot of exercise, tromping around the city in the dark.
On Friday night, after an unilluminating party at the house of a Scholar rep named Dev Dimara, Giddon and Hava walked home together. It was late, and cold. Their route took them through Flag Hill, where the houses stood like small castles behind heavy gates. Lights atop some of the roofs cast a pale glow over oblong balloons.
“Fox report?” said Giddon.
“It’s a little confusing,” said Hava, “because I think a couple are taking turns.”
“Like a tag team of small, fuzzy stalkers?”
“Yes, exactly. For a while, we were being followed by this little one who hides dramatically behind tufts of grass, then leaps out and races madly to the next tuft. Then I didn’t see any for a bit, until we rounded that last corner, and then I saw old Smug Nose. Wait,” she said abruptly, her voice a quick breath and her hand catching his arm, pulling him off the road and into a stand of trees. He saw what she saw, a small form shooting down a staircase and onto the road ahead of them, but he didn’t understand.
Then the person glanced around. The hood of her coat dropped to reveal twists of hair and the flash of a worried expression in a dark face. It was that Cavenda girl, Lovisa, who’d found them snooping in her father’s library.
She ran off like a mouse.
“Why are we hiding?” asked Giddon. “Haven’t you decided she’s harmless?”
“I don’t know. It was something in the way she moved. She didn’t want to be seen.”
“Any idea where she’s headed? Isn’t that the way to her own house?”
“Yes. But it’s Friday night and she lives in the academy dormitories, so I don’t know why she’d be sneaking home in the dark.”
“Maybe she’s the thief who stole the varane formulas,” said Giddon.
“Ha,” said Hava. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
The darkness grew heavier, the sky pressing closer as they walked. When Giddon felt moisture touching his face, he looked up at the soft, drifting snow and remembered a night, maybe five years ago, when he’d convinced Bitterblue to go sledding outside her castle ramparts. How much Bitterblue had been suffering in those days, from all the damage her father had done. How his mood had lightened when the sledding had made her smile, even shriek with laughter. Giddon had wanted more happiness for Bitterblue before she died. He’d wanted her to grow old and have the time to heal from the nightmare of her childhood, the time to help Monsea heal in all the ways she hoped it would. He would have helped her, with all his heart.