south to Monport, snuck me aboard a Lienid ship, and left me on the deck."
Bitterblue's mouth dropped open. "You mean they abandoned you. To strangers who could've decided to throw you overboard!"
He shrugged, smiling lightly. "They saved me from Leck's service, Sparks, in the best way they could manage. And after Leck died, my sister went to great lengths to find me—even though all she knew about me was my age, my eye colors, and the ship they'd left me on. Also, Lienid sailors do not throw babies overboard."
They turned onto Tinker Street and drew up outside the shop door. "They're dead now, aren't they," she said. "Your parents. Leck killed them."
"Yes," he said, then reached out to her when he saw her expression. "Sparks, hey—it's all right. I never really knew them."
"Let's go in," she said, pushing him off, too frustrated with her own helplessness to show him the sorrow she felt. There were crimes for which a queen could never provide enough remuneration.
"We've got one more round of questions, Sparks," he said.
"No. No more."
"I'll ask a nice one, Sparks, I promise."
"A nice one?" Bitterblue snorted. "What's your idea of a nice question, Saf?"
"I'll ask about your mother."
It was the very last thing she had the energy to lie about. "No."
"Oh, come on. What's it like?"
"What's what like?"
"To have a mother."
"Why should you want to ask me that?" she snapped at him, exasperated. "What's wrong with you?"
"Why are you biting my head off, Sparks? The closest thing I ever had to a mother was a sailor named Pinky who taught me to climb a rope with a dagger in my mouth and piss on people from the topmast."
"That's disgusting."
"Well? That's my point. Your mother probably never taught you anything disgusting."
If you had any idea what you were asking me, she thought. If you had the slightest idea to whom you were speaking. She could see nothing sentimental or vulnerable in his face. This wasn't his prologue to pouring out the heart-rending tale of a child sailor on a foreign ship who'd yearned for a mother. He was merely curious; he wanted to know about mothers, and Bitterblue was the only one made vulnerable by the question.
"What do you mean, you want to know about her?" she asked with slightly more patience. "Your question is too vague."
He shrugged. "I'm not picky. Is it she who taught you to read? When you were young, did you live together in the castle and eat your meals together? Or do castle children live in the nurseries? Does she talk of Lienid? Is she the person who taught you to bake bread?"
Bitterblue's mind flickered around all the things he said, images coming to her. Memories, some of them wanting precision. "I did not live in the nurseries," she said honestly. "I was with my mother most of the time. I don't think it was she who taught me to read, but she taught me other things. She taught me mathematics and all about Lienid." Then Bitterblue spoke another certainty that came to her like a thunderbolt. "I believe—I remember—my father taught me to read!"
Grasping her head, she turned away from him, remembering Leck helping her spell out words, in her mother's rooms, at the table. Remembering the feel of a small, colorful book in her hands; remembering his voice, his encouragement, his pride at her progress as she struggled to put letters together. "Darling!" he'd said. "You're fabulous. You're a genius." She'd been so small that she'd had to kneel in the chair to reach the table.
It was an utterly disorienting memory. For a moment, in the
middle of the street, Bitterblue was lost. "Give me a mathematics problem, would you?" she said to Saf unsteadily.
"Huh?" he said. "You mean like, what's twelve times twelve?"
She glared at him. "That's just insulting."
"Sparks," he said, "have you quite lost your mind?"
"Let me sleep here tonight," she said. "I need to sleep here. Can I sleep here?"
"What? Of course not!"
"I won't snoop around. I'm not a spy, remember?"
"I'm not certain you should come in at all, Sparks."
"At least let me see Teddy!"
"Don't you want to ask your last question?"
"You'll owe me one."
Sapphire considered her skeptically. Then, shaking his head, sighing, he produced a key. He opened the door a Sparks-sized crack and motioned her inside.
TEDDY LAY FLAT and limp on a cot in the corner, like a leaf in the road that's been snowed on all winter and rained on all spring; but he was awake. When he