Chapter Thirty-two
Bitterblue couldn’t stop smelling her own skin.
It smelled like soap, and she was the Queen of Monsea again, and Giddon and Hava were out there somewhere—were they safe? Would she be able to find them? Her thoughts were tumbling over each other and she couldn’t stop eating. In fact, all her appetites were returning.
She kept picturing Giddon answering the door of his rooms, shirtless, with mud streaking his chest. She’d always noticed Giddon’s steadiness and size, she’d tucked herself against him and felt how attached he was to the earth, but she hadn’t known about his muscled shoulders, his chest, his arms, about how he looked half-dressed, and now she kept flushing with heat as she sat in the bath, eating fruit and hugging herself like she was trying to establish her own borders. She shouldn’t be thinking about this. The fox had told her that Benni Cavenda had murdered her two men. She should be making plans to avenge Mikka and Brek. Instead she was spinning like a ball on a string, unwinding from weeks of pent-up tension.
Calm down, she kept telling herself. Calm down. You’re safe now.
When Lovisa told her they’d be flying to Torla’s Neck in an illegal, unregistered, uninspected airship that looked like something one of her brothers would make, then clarified that none of her brothers was older than nine, Bitterblue went to Vera and asked if there was a dark room where she could lie down for a while. “I’m a little overwhelmed,” she said, speaking a thousand times more calmly than she felt. “Also, I’m afraid of heights and I get seasick. I’m concerned about this flight.”
“Queen Bitterblue,” said Vera. It was the first time anyone had called her that since she’d fallen out of her royal ship into the sea, and it helped. It made her feel like a person contained in a body, rather than a ball of frantic fear unraveling all over Vera’s office. “We have teas in Winterkeep to help you with those feelings.”
“You do?”
“In particular, we have a tea called rauha. It helps with motion sickness, while creating a state of anxiety-free well-being.”
“It sounds like magic,” said Bitterblue suspiciously. “There must be something wrong with it.”
Vera nodded. “Certainly. It’ll turn you silly. You should perhaps not make any important decisions while under its influence. And it’s addicting if you take it every day, so you must use it only occasionally. You’re small,” she said, cocking her head sideways, surveying Bitterblue. “Your dose will be low.”
“Is it legal?”
“Yes, and regulated. That’s how we can be sure of your dose. Would you like to try some before night comes, as an experiment?”
Bitterblue had the sense sometimes that her entire life was an experiment. Should she try this drug, being pushed upon her by a criminal smuggler? “Why do you operate illegal airships?” she demanded.
Vera’s expression was as closed as ever. “Because a single powerful family in Ledra shouldn’t have a monopoly on an idea,” she said. “Especially an idea for which they overcharge.”
“How did you get the technology? Please tell me that you do, in fact, use known technology?”
“All you need is one genius who has a modest position as a chemist in a Varana factory, a few years to observe and experiment, and a disregard for the non-disclosure contracts she signs.”
“I see.”
“A single family shouldn’t have a monopoly on an idea,” Vera said again.
“So your reasons are socialist,” Bitterblue said dryly. “And ideological.”
A sudden, surprising smile broke across Vera’s brown face. “Sure,” she said. “Also, Kamassarian smugglers pay us a lot of money for them.”
“You build them for Kamassarian smugglers?”
“Or anyone Kamassarian who can promise to fly them only at night,” Vera said. “We sell to the occasional Borzan too. Now, how about it? Would you like to try our rauha? It, at least, is thoroughly legal.”
She spoke with a pleasant sort of graciousness that made Bitterblue laugh suddenly, and want to trust her about the tea. What should I do? she thought. Giddon? And with that, the answer came to her easily, for if there was a tea that might comfort Bitterblue through some of the natural and unnatural terrors of her life, of course Giddon would want her to try it.
“I’ll have the tea,” she said.
“Good,” said Vera.
Thus, Bitterblue floated peacefully across the nighttime sky, letting an ocean of stars sink into the backs of her eyes. It was a new moon. She found it, its orb in shadow, and wished she could point it out to Giddon. Remembering her dizzy nights on the ship watching the sky with Giddon, she examined her present feelings. I’m stronger than the way anything makes me feel, she told Giddon. I miss you. I miss you. Stay alive, so I can tell you how much I miss you.
Then one logical, important, terrifying thought tore her mind away from Giddon. Lovisa. The girl stood across from Bitterblue at the edge of the little car, leaning out and looking down. Bitterblue didn’t like the tension in Lovisa’s shoulders, or how far she was leaning.
Standing was too scary, so Bitterblue scooted across on the floor. “Lovisa?” she said, literally sitting at Lovisa’s feet.
“What?” the girl said, in a voice like Bitterblue had woken her from a deep sleep.
“Would you come sit down here with me?” she said. “I’m scared.”
“I don’t believe you’re scared,” said Lovisa. “You drank rauha.”
Bitterblue wondered if maybe rauha made you un-scared of being blown away or crashing or other imaginary terrors, but left you free to see the real, truly scary things that stood in front of your eyes. “Please?” she said. “I was also hoping you’d explain about . . .” She grasped for a topic. “The history of proprietary technology in Winterkeep.”
Lovisa let out one long, irritated sigh. Then she slumped down beside Bitterblue like a rag doll, a girl stuffed with disappointments. For a while she said nothing. Eventually she began a monologue, expressed in a very bored voice, about Winterkeep’s proprietary attitudes toward airship and other technologies. She had a lot of opinions. Mostly her opinions were that all politicians in Winterkeep, and probably everywhere else too, were contemptible deceivers, motivated by money.
It was fascinating to hear someone so young speak so knowledgeably, and so cynically, about Winterkeep’s political parties. Eventually, Bitterblue forgot that she’d asked the question in order to keep Lovisa from jumping out.
* * *
—
In early morning, the airship landed in a field that looked like a piece of night sky as they descended, so thick was it with scattered lamps. Bitterblue didn’t understand the landing process. It seemed to involve people in the airship shooting small hooks at nets positioned on the ground.