When Katsa dragged her out of bed for sword practice, Bitterblue found that she'd dragged not just Raffin and Bann, but Giddon and Po along as well. The lot of them waited in Bitterblue's sitting room, picking at her breakfast while she dressed. Giddon, muddy and rumpled in last night's clothing, showed every sign of having been out all night. Collapsing on her sofa, he actually fell asleep for a moment.
Raffin and Bann stood together, propped against the wall and against each other, half dozing. At one point, Raffin, not knowing he had one small, curious witness, gave Bann a sleepy kiss on the ear.
Bitterblue had wondered that about them. It was nice when something in the world became clear. Especially when it was a nice thing.
"THIEL," SHE SAID in her office later that morning. "Do you remember that mad engineer with the watermelons?"
"You mean Ivan, Lady Queen?" said Thiel.
"Yes, Ivan. When I was walking back from that murder trial yesterday, Thiel, I overheard a conversation that concerned me. Apparently, Ivan is in charge of the renovation of the east city and is doing a mad, useless job of it. Could we have someone look into that? It sounds as if there's actual danger of buildings collapsing and so on."
"Oh," said Thiel, then sat down randomly, rubbing his forehead in an absent manner.
"Are you all right, Thiel?"
"Forgive me, Lady Queen," he said. "I'm perfectly all right. This Ivan business is a dreadful oversight on our part. We'll see to it immediately."
"Thank you," she said, looking at him doubtfully. "And will I be going to another High Court case today? Or will it be some new adventure?"
"There's not much of interest in the High Court today, Lady Queen. Let me see what other extra-office task I can rustle up."
"That's all right, Thiel."
"Oh? Have you lost your wanderlust, Lady Queen?" he asked hopefully.
"No," she said, rising. "I'm going to the library."
WHEN APPROACHING THE library in the usual manner, one walked into the north vestibule of the great courtyard, then stepped straight through the library doors. The first room, Bitterblue discovered, had ladders that ran on tracks and led to balconied mezzanines connected by bridges. Everywhere, tall bookshelves cut into the window glare like dark tree trunks. Dust hung suspended in shafts of light from the high windows. As she had the night before, Bitterblue turned in circles, sensing the familiarity and trying to remember.
Why had it been so long since she'd come here? When had she stopped reading, aside from the charters and reports that crossed her desk? When she'd become queen, and her advisers had taken over her education?
She walked past Death's desk, covered with papers and one sleeping cat, the skinniest, most wretched creature Bitterblue had ever seen. It lifted its hoary head and hissed at her as she passed. "I expect you and Death get along quite well," she said to it.
Arbitrary steps, one or two here or there, seemed to be part of the library's design. The farther she advanced into the library, the more steps she descended or climbed. The farther into the shelves, the darker and mustier her landscape, until she needed to backtrack and remove a lantern from a wall to light her way. Entering a nook lit by dim lamps stretching from the walls on long arms, she reached up and traced a carving in the wooden end of a bookcase. Then she realized that the carving was a curiously shaped set of letters that spelled out large, floppy words: Stories and Explorations, Monsea's East.
"Lady Queen?" said a voice behind her.
She had been thinking of the story rooms, of tales of strange creatures in the mountains. The sneer of her librarian dragged her unceremoniously back into reality. "Death," she said.
"May I help you find anything, Lady Queen?" Death asked with an attitude of palpable unhelpfulness.
Bitterblue studied Death's face, his green and purple eyes that glinted with antagonism. "I found a book here," she said, "recently, that I remember reading as a child."
"That couldn't surprise me less, Lady Queen. Your father and mother both encouraged your presence in the libraries."
"Did they? Death, have you been the caretaker of this library all my life?"
"Lady Queen, I have been the caretaker of this library for fifty years."
"Are there books here that tell about the time of Leck's rule?"
"Not a one," he said. "Leck kept no records that I know of."
"All right, then," she said. "Let's focus on the last eighteen years. How old was I when