"Tell no one, Hava," said Bitterblue. "If you doubt the importance of your silence, ask Prince Po."
"If you say it's important, Lady Queen," said Hava, "then I have no need to ask Prince Po."
Bitterblue studied this Graceling liar, this odd young woman who seemed to go wherever she wanted and do whatever took her fancy, but did so in fear, and in the most utter solitude. Hava was still kneeling. "Stand please, Hava," said Bitterblue.
She was tall. As she stood, her face caught the light, and Bitterblue saw that her other eye was a deep and strange red. "Why do you hide in my art gallery, Hava?"
"Because there's no one else here, Lady Queen," said Hava softly. "And I can be near my uncle, who needs me. And I can be with my mother's work."
"Do you remember your mother?"
Hava nodded. "I was eight when she died, Lady Queen. She taught me to hide from King Leck, always."
"How old are you now?"
"Sixteen, Lady Queen."
"And—are you not lonely, Hava, hiding all the time?"
Something in Hava's pretty face wavered.
"Hava?" said Bitterblue, struck with a sudden doubt. "Is this what you really look like?"
The girl hung her head. When she looked up again, her eyes were still copper and red, but they sat in a face that was perhaps too plain to contain their strangeness, with a long, narrow mouth like a gash, and a snub nose.
It took Bitterblue concentrated effort to stop herself from reaching up to touch Hava's face, for she understood this. How she wanted to comfort the unhappiness that shone in those eyes and didn't need to be there. Bitterblue liked Hava's face. "I very much like how you look," Bitterblue said. "Thank you for showing me."
"I'm sorry, Lady Queen," she whispered. "It's hard not to hide. I'm so used to it."
"Perhaps it was unfair of me to ask."
"But it's a relief, Lady Queen," she whispered, "to let someone see me."
THE NEXT DAY, Captain Smit gave Bitterblue the news that Runnemood had, indeed, been responsible not just for Saf 's framing but for Ivan the engineer's murder.
Finally, Bitterblue thought, some progress. I'll ask Helda to put some pressure on my spies to confirm it.
The day after that, Captain Smit told Bitterblue that now it was clear that Runnemood had also been responsible for the death of Lady Hood, the woman on Teddy's list who'd stolen girls for Leck.
"That was a murder?" Bitterblue said in dismay. "Runnemood is murdering other guilty parties?"
"I regret that our investigations suggest as much, Lady Queen," said Captain Smit. He had the appearance lately of a man under a great deal of strain, and Bitterblue made him drink some tea before leaving her office.
Next came the news that Runnemood had been in close correspondence with Lord Danzhol, may even have been responsible for convincing Danzhol to harm the queen. Then, the news that none of the living people on Teddy's list seemed in any way involved in killing, framing, or otherwise hurting truthseekers. The dead ones had all been killed by Runnemood.
On the next day—the nineteenth day since Runnemood's disappearance—Captain Smit marched into Bitterblue's office, set his chin, made his hands into fists, and presented her with a theory that Runnemood had been the single mastermind behind all the truthseeker killings and all related crime, possibly because the drive to be forward-thinking and leave Leck's time behind had triggered a vulnerable switch in his mind and made him insane.
Bitterblue had little to say in response to this. Her spies had not yet managed to confirm or deny any of the things Smit was telling her. But it had all begun to sound a bit ridiculous to her, and a great deal too convenient, that Runnemood and madness should be the entire explanation for something that had caused so much harm. Runnemood wasn't Leck; he wasn't even Graced. And Smit, standing before her desk, was jumping nervously at every slightest sound, though he'd never seemed the nervous type before. His eyes flashed bright with some strange agitation, and when he looked at her, he seemed to be seeing something else.
"Captain Smit," she said quietly. "Why don't you tell me what's really going on?"
"Oh, I have told you, Lady Queen," he said. "Indeed, I have. If you'll excuse me, Lady Queen, I'll go to my office and come back with the corroborating evidence."
He left, then didn't come back.
Po, she thought, pushing through papers at her desk. I need you to talk