Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3) Page 59
Author: Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue was in the closet reaching for the last few books when Giddon returned. "It goes on for some time, Lady Queen," he said, "and ends at a door. It took me forever to find the lever to open the door. It opens into the same corridor in the east castle where the tunnel to the east city starts, and it's hidden behind a hanging, just as all these doors seem to be. I only saw the hanging from the back, but it looked like a big, green wildcat tearing out the throat of a man. I peeked out into the corridor. I don't think anyone saw me."

"I hope no one else has made the colorful-animal-hidden- tunnel connection," breathed Bitterblue. "I'm furious with Po for not realizing."

"Not fair, Lady Queen," said Giddon. "Po can't see colors, and anyway, he hasn't had time to be mapping your castle."

Now she was angry with herself. "I'd forgotten about the colors. I'm an ass."

Before Giddon could respond, an enormous, distant crash interrupted them. They stared at each other in alarm. "Here, take these," Bitterblue said, shoving most of the remaining books at him, cradling the rest in her arm. The noises continued; they came from above, from the direction of Leck's room. Giddon and Bitterblue ran up the slope.

In the bedroom, Holt was lifting the bed frame into the air and crashing it down again onto the rug, breaking it into pieces. "Uncle," Hava cried, trying to grab his arm. "Stop it.

Stop it!" Bann was struggling with Hava, trying to pull her away, but letting go every time she flickered into something else. Grabbing on to his own head, moaning.

"He ruined her," Holt said over and over, deliriously, lifting a piece of the bed frame and smashing it into the floor. "He ruined her. I let him ruin my sister." The bed frame he shattered so easily was a solid, huge thing. Splintered pieces of wood flew around the room, knocking against sculptures, raising explosions of dust. Hava fel down and he didn't even glance at her. Bann dragged Hava out of Holt's range and she huddled on the floor, weeping.

"Did he take all the boards down from the door?" Bitterblue asked Bann, shouting over the noise. Bann nodded, breathless. "Then get the books up the stairs to my rooms,"

she ordered both Bann and Giddon, "before the entire Monsean Guard breaks through the door to see what the noise is about." Then she went to Hava and held on to the girl as best she could, closing her eyes, because Hava kept changing shape and it was sickening.

"There's nothing we can do," Bitterblue told her. "Hava, we must just let him be until he's done."

"He'l hate himself when it's over," said Hava, gasping with tears. "That's the worst thing about it. When he comes back to his senses and realizes he went berserk, he'l hate himself for it."

"Then we must stay out of the way, where he can't hurt us,"

Bitterblue said, "so that we're able to reassure him that the only thing he injured was a bed frame."

No guards came. When the bed frame was wel and truly smashed, Holt sat among the pieces on the floor, crying.

Hava and Bitterblue went to him; they sat with him while he began his apologies and his expressions of shame. They tried to take that burden away from him, with gentle words of their own.

THE NEXT MORNING, Bitterblue walked into the library with a journal under her arm and stopped before Death's desk.

"Your Grace of reading and remembering," she said to Death. "Does it work with symbols you don't understand, or only with letters you do?"

Death wrinkled his nose in a way that made it seem as if he were wrinkling his entire face. "I have no earthly idea what you're talking about, Lady Queen."

"A cipher," Bitterblue said. "You've rewritten entire pages in cipher, from the book about ciphers that Leck destroyed.

Were you able to do that because you understood the ciphers? Or can you remember a string of letters even if they mean nothing to you?"

"It's a complicated question," said Death. "If I can make them mean something—even if it's something silly that they don't actual y mean—then yes, to some extent—if the passage isn't too long. But in the case of the ciphers in the cipher book, Lady Queen, I rewrote them successfully because I understood them and had their translations memorized. Passages of that length, had they been random strings of letters or numbers with no meaning, would have been much more difficult. Luckily, I do have a mind for ciphers."

"You have a mind for ciphers," Bitterblue repeated vaguely, talking more to herself than to him. "You have a gift for looking at letters and words and seeing patterns and meaning. That is how your Grace works."

"Wel ," Death said, "more or less, Lady Queen. Much of the time."

"And if it's a cipher in symbols, rather than letters?"

"Letters are symbols, Lady Queen," Death said with a sniff.

"One can always learn more of them."

Bitterblue handed him the book she was carrying and waited while he opened it. At the first page, his eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement. At the second page, his mouth began to hang open. He sat back, dumbfounded, lifting his eyes to her face. Blinking too fast. "Where did you find it?"

he asked in a hoarse, throaty voice.

"Do you know what it is?"

"It's his hand," Death whispered.

"His hand! How can you tell that, when none of the letters are the same?"

"His handwriting is odd, Lady Queen. you'll remember. He consistently wrote some letters strangely. The way he wrote them is similar, and in some cases, identical, to the

symbols in this book. Do you see?"

Death pointed one thin finger to a symbol that looked like a U with a tail.

Leck had, indeed, always written the letter U with that strange little tail at its top right. Bitterblue recognized it, and realized suddenly that she'd intuited the similarity the very first time she'd opened the first book. "Of course," she said.

"Do you think this symbol corresponds to our U ?"

"It wouldn't make for much of a cipher if it did."

"This cipher is your new job," Bitterblue said. "When I came to you, it was only to ask you to read it, in the hopes that you could memorize it, or even copy it, so that if we lost them, they wouldn't truly be lost. But now I see you're the man to break the cipher. It's not a simple substitution cipher, for there are thirty-two symbols. I counted. And there are thirty- five books."

"Thirty-five!"

"Yes."

Death's strange eyes were damp. He pull ed the book toward him and held it to his chest.

"Break the cipher," Bitterblue said, "I beg you, Death. It may be the only way I ever understand anything. I'll work on it as wel , and so will a couple of my spies who have a talent for ciphers. You may keep as many of the books as you want here, but no one else must ever, ever see them.

Understand?"

Not speaking, Death nodded. Then Lovejoy sat up in Death's lap, his head poking above the desktop, his fur sticking out in oddbal directions, as it always did, as if his hide fit him poorly. Bitterblue hadn't even known he was there. Death pull ed Lovejoy against his chest and held him tight, gripping both cat and book as if he expected someone to try to take them from him.

"Why did Leck let you live?" Bitterblue asked Death quietly.

"Because he needed me," said Death. "He couldn't control knowledge unless he knew what the knowledge was and where to find it. I lied to him, when I could. I pretended his Grace worked on me even more than it did; I preserved what I could; I rewrote what I could and hid it. It was never enough," he said, his voice breaking. "He raped this library and all other libraries, and I couldn't stop him. When he suspected me of lying, he cut me, and whenever he caught me in a lie, he tortured my cats."

A tear ran down Death's face. Lovejoy began to struggle from being held so hard. And Bitterblue understood that a cat's fur might lie strangely on its body if its skin has been cut by knives. A man's spirit might shiver unpleasantly around his body if he has been alone with horror and suffering for too long.

There was nothing she could do to mend that kind of suffering. Nor did she want to frighten Death with demonstrative behavior.

But leaving without an acknowledgment of all he'd said was not an option. Was there a right thing to do? Or only a thousand wrong things? Bitterblue walked around the desk to him and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. When he breathed in and out once, raggedly, she obeyed an astonishing instinct, bent, once, raggedly, she obeyed an astonishing instinct, bent, and kissed his dry forehead. He took another great breath.

Then he said, "I will break this cipher for you, Lady Queen."

* * * * * IN HER OFFICE with Thiel at the helm, paper passed more smoothly across Bitterblue's desk than it had in weeks.

"Now that it's November," she said to him, "we can hope for a response soon from my uncle with advice on how I'm to provide remuneration to the people Leck stole from. I wrote to him at the start of September, remember? It'l be a relief to get to work on that. I'll feel like I'm actual y doing something."

"I theorize that those bones in the river are from bodies dumped by King Leck, Lady Queen," responded Thiel.

"What?" Bitterblue said, startled. "Does that have something to do with remuneration?"

"No, Lady Queen," said Thiel. "But people are asking questions about the bones, and I wonder if we shouldn't release a statement explaining that King Leck dumped them. It will put an end to the speculation, Lady Queen, and all ow us to focus on matters like remuneration."

"I see," said Bitterblue. "I'd prefer to wait until Madlen has concluded her investigation, Thiel. We don't actual y know yet how the bones got there."

"Of course, Lady Queen," said Thiel, with utter correctness.

"In the meantime, I'll draft the statement, so that it's ready for release at the slightest moment."

"Thiel," she said, putting her pen down and giving him a look. "I'd much rather you spent your time on the question of who's burning buildings and kill ing people in the east city than on drafting a statement that might never be released! Now that Captain Smit is away, " she said, trying not to imbue the word with too much sarcasm, "find out for me who's in charge of the investigation. I want daily reports, just like before, and you may as wel know that I've rather lost my faith in the Monsean Guard. If they want to impress me, they should find some answers that match the answers my own spies are finding, and fast."

Of course, her own spies weren't finding any answers. No one in the city had anything helpful to offer; the spies sent to investigate the names on Teddy's list uncovered nothing.

But the Monsean Guard didn't need to know that, and neither did Thiel.

Then, a week after Madlen and Saf had gone to Silverhart, Bitterblue received a letter that elucidated—possibly— why her spies still weren't finding any answers.