"No," said Teddy. "But I think there are ways in which he could be dangerous to you without ever telling a single lie."
"Teddy," said Bitterblue, sighing. "I don't want to talk riddles with you. Could we please not talk riddles?"
Teddy smiled. "All right. What should we talk about?"
"What are these papers?" she asked, passing them to him. "Is this your book of words or your book of truths?"
"These are my words," said Teddy, holding the papers to his chest, hugging them protectively. "My dear words. Today I was thinking about the P's. Oh, Lucky, how will I ever think of every word and every definition? Sometimes, when I'm having a conversation, I become unable to pay attention, because all I can do is tear apart other people's sentences and obsess over whether I've remembered to include all their words. My dictionary is destined to have great gaps of meaning."
Great gaps of meaning, thought Bitterblue, taking a breath, breathing air through the phrase. Yes. "You're going to do a wonderful job, Teddy," she said. "Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's."
"You only used one word beginning with P in that sentence," said Teddy dreamily.
The door opened and Saf stuck his head in, glaring at Teddy. "Have you divulged our every secret yet?"
"There were no P-words in that sentence," said Teddy, half asleep.
Saf made an impatient noise. "I'm going out."
Teddy woke right up, tried to sit up, then winced. "Please don't go out if it's only to look for trouble, Saf."
"When do I ever have to look for it?"
"Well, at least bandage that arm," he insisted, proffering a bandage from the small table beside his bed.
"Arm?" said Bitterblue. "Did they hurt your arm?" She saw, then, the way he was holding his arm close to his chest. She got up and went to him. "Let me see," she said.
"Go away."
"I'll help you bandage it."
"I can do it."
"One-armed?"
After a moment, with an irritated snort, Saf stalked to the table, hooked his foot around a chair leg, yanked the chair out, and sat. Then he pushed his left sleeve to his elbow and scowled at Bitterblue, who tried to keep her face from showing what she felt at the sight of his arm. The entire forearm was bruised and swollen. A long, even cut, fully the length of her hand, ran along the top, neatly stitched together with thread, the dark reddish tinge of which came, she knew, from Saf 's own blood.
So, pain was at the base of Saf's fury tonight. And perhaps humiliation? Had they held him down and cut him deliberately? The incision was long and neat.
"Is it deep?" Bitterblue asked as she bandaged it. "Did someone clean it properly and give you medicines?"
"Roke may not be a queen's healer, Sparks," Saf said sarcastically, "but he does know how to keep a person from dying of a flesh wound."
"Where are you going, Saf?" asked Teddy wearily.
"To the silver docks," said Saf. "I got a tip tonight."
"Sparks, I'd feel better if you went with him," Teddy said. "He's more likely to behave if he knows he needs to look after you."
Bitterblue was of a different opinion. Touching Saf 's arm, she could almost feel the tension humming in his body. He had an instinct toward recklessness tonight, and it was rooted in his anger.
And that was why she went with him—not so that he would have someone to look after, but so that someone, no matter how small and reluctant, would be there to look after him.
IT WAS GOOD that she was a strong runner, or Saf might have left her behind.
"Word is that Lady Katsa arrived in the city today," Saf said. "Is that true? And is Prince Po still at court?"
"Why do you care? Planning to rob them or something?"
"Sparks, I'd sooner rob myself than rob my prince. How is your mother?"
His strange, persistent courtesy toward her mother seemed almost funny tonight, what with his rough appearance and his madcap way of barreling through the wet streets as if he were looking for something to smash. "She's well," Bitterblue said. "Thank you," she added, not certain, at first, what she was thankful for. Then realizing, with a small implosion of shame, that it was for his adamant belief in her mother.
At the silver docks, the river wind pushed the rain right through to their skin.