think I need to rethink the current shelving of King Leck's stories, Lady Queen, for they're in a section reserved for fantastical literature."
"That's what you're worried about?" demanded Bitterblue. "The shelving of your books? Send someone for Madlen, will you? I'm going to my table, where I intend to read about how monarchy is tyranny," she said, then stormed away in annoyance, realizing that it hadn't been a particularly incisive retort.
Madlen produced a much more satisfactory reaction. Narrowing her eyes on the pelt, she announced "Hm-hm!" then proceeded to ask a thousand questions. Who'd found it, and where? How had the creature behaved? How had Lady Katsa defended herself? Had Lady Katsa encountered any people? How far had Lady Katsa followed the tunnel? Where, precisely, did this tunnel start? What was going to be done about it, when, and by whom?
"I hoped you might have some medical insight," Bitterblue managed to interject.
"It's rutting peculiar, Lady Queen," said Madlen, then glanced at the hanging of the wild-haired woman, spun on her heel, and marched off.
Sighing, Bitterblue turned to Lovejoy, who was sprawled on the table, peering at her with his chin resting on one paw. "It's a good thing I employ all these experts," she said. Then she held the tip of the pelt out to him, poking his nose with it. "What do you think of it?"
Lovejoy made a point of having no opinion whatsoever.
I WON'T LET him into our rooms. Perversely, he honors my barricades, while setting up his own guards outside our door. When he goes away to his graveyard I explore his rooms. I'm looking for passage out, but find nothing.
If I knew his secrets and plans, could I stop him? But I can neither read them nor find them. The sculptures watched me look. They told me the castle has secrets and he'd kill me if he found me snooping. It was a warning, not a threat. They like me, not him.
Bitterblue sat that night with legs crossed on her bedroom floor, wondering if it was worthwhile to try to find any sense in the passage when half of it seemed raving mad.
"Lady Queen?" said a voice from the doorway.
Bitterblue turned, startled. It was Fox.
"Forgive me for the intrusion, Lady Queen," said Fox.
"What time is it?" asked Bitterblue.
"One o'clock, Lady Queen."
"Perhaps a bit late for intrusions."
"I'm sorry, Lady Queen," said Fox. "It's just that there's something I've got to tell you, Lady Queen."
Bitterblue extricated herself from the sheets and went to stand by her dressing table, wanting to be away from her mother's secrets, her father's secrets, while Fox was in the room. "Go on," she prompted, guessing what this was about.
"I found a set of keys, Lady Queen," Fox said, "in a corner, in a deserted back room of the smithy. I'm not certain what they were the keys to. I—could have asked Ornik his opinion," she said, hesitating, "but I was snooping when I found them, Lady Queen, and didn't want him to know. He came in and thought I was waiting for him, Lady Queen, and I thought it might be best to let him go on thinking that."
"I see," said Bitterblue dryly. "Mightn't they simply have been keys to the smithy?"
"I tried that, Lady Queen," said Fox, "and they weren't. They were big, grand, important-looking keys, not like any I've ever seen. But before I could bring them to you, Lady Queen, they disappeared from my pocket."
"Oh?" said Bitterblue. "Do you mean that someone stole them?"
"I couldn't say, Lady Queen," said Fox, looking down at her own folded hands.
Fox knew perfectly well that Bitterblue knew perfectly well that Fox was spending her daylight hours on a platform with a thief who had every appearance, on the basis of recent events, of being involved with the queen somehow. Bitterblue couldn't blame Fox for deciding not to accuse Saf outright of theft. For all Fox knew, it risked angering the queen.
At the same time, if it weren't for Saf, would Bitterblue be hearing about the keys at all? Once Saf had stolen them, Fox had to tell Bitterblue about them, in case Saf did. Regardless of her original intentions, and regardless of where she'd actually gotten them.
"Have you learned anything new about the crown, Fox?" she asked as a sort of test, to see if everyone's stories matched up.
"The Gray fellow refuses to sell to you, Lady Queen," said Fox. "And he's spreading rumors. But it's only to make you nervous, Lady Queen, and