mightily that she wondered if it was possible for one small queen in one big bed to start an earthquake.
Well. No point in delaying.
Sometime later, with gasping breath and a pounding head, Bitterblue left her rooms and began the long trek through corridors and down stairways. She wouldn't think about her one-armedness, or the lack of knives in her sleeves. There were a great many things she wouldn't think about tonight; she would trust to luck and hope she encountered no one.
Then, in the great courtyard, a person stepped out of the shad
ows and stood in her path. He let off gleams of light, softly visible in the torches, as he always did.
"Please don't make me stop you," Po said. It wasn't a joke or a warning. It was a true plea. "I will if I have to, but it'll only make both of us more sick."
"Oh, Po," she said, then went to him and hugged him with her one good arm.
He put his arm around her uninjured side, held her tight, and sighed, slowly, into her hair, balancing himself against her. When she rested her ear against his chest, she could hear his flying heartbeat. Slowly, it calmed. He said, "Are you determined to go out?"
"I want to tell Saf and Teddy about Runnemood," she said. "I want to ask if anything's changed with the crown, and I need to tell Saf again that I'm sorry."
"Will you wait until tomorrow, and let me send someone to bring them to you?"
It was bliss, the very idea of being allowed to turn around and go back to her bed. "Will you do it early?"
"Yes. Will you sleep, so that when they come, it won't exhaust you to talk to them?"
"Yes," she said. "All right."
"All right," he said, sighing again above her. "When Madlen stepped out for a moment today, Beetle, I followed the tunnel under the east wall."
"What? Po, you'll never get healthy!"
Po snorted. "Yes, we should all take your advice on such matters. It starts at a door behind a hanging, in an east corridor on the ground floor. It lets out into a teeny, dark alleyway in the east city, near the base of Winged Bridge."
"Do you think he escaped into the east city, then?"
"I suppose so," Po said. "I'm sorry my range doesn't extend that far. And I'm sorry I never took time to talk to him and pick up that something was wrong. I haven't been much use to you since I got here."
"Po. You've been ill, and before that, you were busy. We'll find him, and then you can talk to him."
He didn't respond, just rested his head on her hair.
She asked, once, whispering, "Have you heard anything from Katsa?"
He shook his head no.
"Are you ready for her to come back?"
"I'm not ready for anything," he said. "But that doesn't mean I don't want things to happen."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I want her to come back. Is that a good enough answer?"
Yes.
"To bed?" he said.
Yes, all right.
BEFORE FALLING ASLEEP, she read a fragment of embroidery.
Thiel reaches his limit every day yet goes on. Perhaps only because I beg him. Most would rather forget and obey unthinking than face truth of mad world Leck tries to create.
Tries and, I think, sometimes fails. He destroyed sculptures in his rooms today. Why? Also took his favorite sculptor Bellamew away. We'll never see her again. Success at destruction. But failure at something, for he cannot be satisfied. Fits of temper.
He's too interested in Bitterblue. I must get her away. That's why I beg Thiel to hold on.
26
"I'M SURPRISED TO see you," Bitterblue said the next morning to Rood as she entered her tower office. He was quiet and grim in the absence of his brother, but not meek, not shaking. Clearly not in the throes of a nervous episode.
"I've had a bad twenty-four hours, Lady Queen," he said quietly. "I won't pretend otherwise. But Thiel came to me last night and impressed upon me how much I'm needed right now."
When Rood suffered, his suffering was present and material; he didn't hide behind emptiness. It was a frankness that made Bitterblue want to trust him. "How much of this did you know?" she ventured.
"I haven't been my brother's confidant for some years, Lady Queen," he said. "Frankly, it's best that it was Thiel he encountered in the halls that night. He might have walked right past me and never said a word, and it was his speaking that saved your life."