cannot sleep with all these pins in my hair." Lord Giddon's deep voice responding: He would go and get Helda. And Bitterblue, half asleep, saying forcefully, "No, it cannot wait," and yanking at her wound-up braids, and Giddon reaching to stop her, sitting beside her on her own bed and helping her, saying things to calm her. She leaning against him as he took down her hair, he murmuring with gentlemanly sympathy as she sighed against his chest, "I'm so tired. Oh, I haven't slept in ever so long."
Oh, she thought. How mortifying. And now her throat stung; her muscles ached, as if she'd been through one of Katsa's fighting lessons. I killed a man today, she thought, and with that thought, tears began to run down her face. She cried freely, hugging a pillow, pressing her face into Ashen's embroidery.
After a while, her feelings solidified themselves around an odd little comfort. Mama had to kill a man once too. I've only done what she's done.
Paper crinkled in the pocket of her gown. Dashing tears away, Bitterblue pulled out Teddy's strange words and held them tight in one fist. A small determination flared in her breast. She was a puzzle solver, and a truthseeker too. She didn't know what Teddy had meant by it, but she knew what she meant. Fumbling to light a lamp, finding pen and ink, she turned the paper to its back and wrote.
LIST OF PUZZLE PIECES
Teddy's words. Who are my "first men"? What did he mean by cutting and stitching? Am I in danger? Whose prey am I?
Danzhol's words. What did he SEE? Was he complicit with Leck in some way? What was he trying to say?
Teddy and Saf 's actions. Why did they steal a gargoyle, and other things too? What does it mean to steal what's already been stolen?
Darby's records. Was he lying to me about the gargoyles never having been there?
General mysteries. Who attacked Teddy?
Things I've seen with my own eyes. Why is the east city falling apart but decorated anyway? Why was Leck so peculiar about decorating the castle?
What did Leck DO?
Here, she scribbled a few notes.
Tortured pets. Made people disappear. Cut. Burned printing shops. (Built bridges. Did castle renovations.) Honestly, how can I know how to rule my kingdom when I have no idea what happened in Leck's time? How can I understand what my people need? How can I find out more? In the story rooms? Should I ask my advisers again, even though they won't answer?
She added one more question, slowly and in small letters.
What is Saf's Grace?
Then, returning to her larger list, she wrote:
Why is everybody insane? Danzhol. Holt. Judge Quall. Ivan, the engineer who switched the gravestones and the watermelons. Darby. Rood. Although, she wondered, was it insane to drink too much from time to time, or to be susceptible to nerves? Bitterblue crossed out the word insane and replaced it with strange. Except that that opened the list to everybody. Everybody was strange. In a fit of frustration, she scratched out strange and wrote the word CRACKPOTS in big letters. Then she added Thiel and Runnemood, Saf, Teddy, Bren, Tilda, Death, and Po, just to be thorough.
P A R T T W O
Puzzles and Muddles
(September)
8
SOME WONDERFUL PERSON had gotten every trace of Danzhol's blood out of the stone of her office floor. Even looking for it, Bitterblue couldn't find it.
She read the charter once more, carefully, letting each word sink in, and then she signed it. There was no point not to now.
"What will we do with his body?" she asked Thiel.
"It has been burned, Lady Queen," said Thiel.
"What? Already! Why was I not informed? I would have liked to go to the ceremony."
The door to the tower room opened. Death the librarian came in.
"I'm afraid the body couldn't wait for burning, Lady Queen," said Thiel. "It's only just September."
"And it was no different from any other burning ceremony, Lady Queen," added Runnemood from the window.
"That is not the point!" said Bitterblue. "I killed the man, for rot's sake. I should have been at the burning."
"It's not actually Monsean tradition to burn the dead, you know, Lady Queen," Death put in. "It never has been."
"Nonsense," said Bitterblue, really quite upset. "We all perform fire ceremonies."
"I suppose it's not politic to contradict the queen," Death replied with such undisguised sarcasm that Bitterblue was surprised into looking at him hard. This man, nearing seventy, had the paper-thin skin of a man in his nineties. His mismatched eyes