Bitterblue (Graceling Realm, #3)

by Kristin Cashore

Mama says that when I’m confused or can’t remember, I must do arithmetic, because numbers are an anchor. She’s written out problems for me so that I have them at these moments.

“In a recent divorce trial, Lady Queen,” said Quall, “the defendant kept mumbling about bones for no reason, like a man off his head, and I will not sit through that again! It was distressing!” “But you often judge murder trials. Surely you’re accustomed to talk of bones.” “This is a trial about watermelons! Watermelons are invertebrate creatures!” cried Quall.

Watermelons with bones lol

“There will always be the occasional person in the city who can’t read, Lady Queen. It’s hardly a matter that requires the direct intervention of the crown. You’ve now created a precedent which intimates that the queen’s court is available to educate any citizen who comes forward claiming to be illiterate!” “My citizens should be able to come forward. My father saw that they were deprived of education for thirty-five years. Their illiteracy is the responsibility of the crown!”

Po had lost his sight eight years ago. He could not read words on paper, for while the part of his Grace that allowed him to sense the physical world around him compensated for many aspects of his blindness, he had trouble demystifying differences on flat surfaces, and he could not sense color. He wrote in large letters with a sharp piece of graphite, because graphite was easier to control than ink, and he wrote with a ruler as a guide, since he could not see what he was writing. He also used a small set of movable wooden letters as a reference to help him keep his own ciphers straight in his mind.

“Really,” said Thiel crossly, bending to collect them, “I was quite clear to Darby that we wished a single, recent map. Take these away, Death. They’re unnecessary.” “All paper maps are recent,” said Death with a sniff, “when one considers the vastness of geological time.”

A republic? How? They’ve got nothing in place, no structure to take over once Thigpen is gone. If they’re not careful, King Murgon will move in from Sunder and we’ll be calling Estill East Sunder. And Murgon will become twice the bully he is now.

A fantasy series where the idea of a republic is actually taken seriously heck yeah

Waving away their hasty attempts to rise, she wandered into the bookshelves, toward the tapestry that hung over the opening she’d come through. She noticed, absentmindedly, that the woman in the hanging, dressed in white furs and surrounded by stark white forest, had eyes green as moss and hair bright and wild, like a sunset or like fire. She was too vivid, too strange to be human. Yet another odd decorative object of Leck’s.

Fire <3

A monarch was responsible for the welfare of the people he ruled. If he hurt them deliberately, he should lose the privilege of sovereignty.

Was he lying to me about the gargoyles never having been there?

The gaslighting is so bizarre

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.

Cute

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 could only absorb it in small portions. It gave her nightmares, such that she stopped reading it in bed or keeping it at her bedside, as she was wont to do with the other books. His handwriting, with its large, slightly off-kilter letters, was so organically familiar that she had dreams that every word she’d ever read had been written in that handwriting.

Leck's psychological abuse is so deep

One of his stories was about a woman with impossible red, gold, and pink hair who controlled people with her venomous mind, living her life forever alone because her power was so hateful. Bitterblue knew this could only be the woman in the hanging in the library, the woman in white. But that woman had no venom in her eyes; that woman wasn’t hateful. It calmed Bitterblue to stand before the hanging and gaze at her. Either Leck had described her wrong to the artist or the artist had changed her on purpose.

“Teddy,” Bitterblue said to him, “you told me before that you were writing a book of words and a book of truths. I would like to read your book of truths.” Teddy grinned again. “Truths are dangerous,” he said. “Then why are you writing them in a book?” “To catch them between the pages,” said Teddy, “and trap them before they disappear.” “If they’re dangerous, why not let them disappear?” “Because when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.”

This is a really good way to describe the kind of mind control that Leck did, as well as the way state propaganda and information suppression works without magic.

“I have been rewriting, by hand, the books King Leck burned, Lady Queen.” Something tightened in Bitterblue’s throat. “Leck burned books?” “Yes, Lady Queen.” “From this library?” “Yes, and other libraries, Lady Queen, and private collections. Once he’d decided to destroy a book, he sought out every copy.”

“In addition to the books King Leck obliterated,” he was saying, “he also forced me to alter one thousand four hundred forty-five titles, Lady Queen, removing or replacing words, sentences, passages he considered objectionable. The rectification of such errors waits until I’ve completed my current, more urgent project.”

Fighting tears and fed up with worry, fed up with people who made no sense and lied, she wrote “BALLS” in big letters across the bottom, a general expression of dissatisfaction with the state of all things.

I love that BALLS is a swear in this world

“Then what are they doing in my bedroom?” “I believe they’re having an argument,” said Po. “I’m waiting for them to finish so that I can resume the argument I’m having with Katsa.”

There was something funny about Po’s face, about the way he was steadfastly not turning it to her. “Look at me,” she said. “Can’t,” he said glibly. “I’m blind.”

“You want me to pay close attention to Holt, who is stealing your sculptures, because you’re concerned for his health,” Giddon repeated incredulously. “Yes. His mental health. Please don’t tell him I mentioned the sculptures. You do trust him, though, Giddon?” “Holt, who is stealing your sculptures and is of questionable mental health?”

The phrasr "mental health" in a fantasy novel is nice

Bitterblue examined the item in her hand. It was a medicinal envelope with a label written clear across the front: “Seabane, for the prevention of pregnancy.”

I'm here for fantasy birth control

Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. “Lady Queen,” she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. “It is not the job of a child to protect her mother. It’s the mother’s job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?”

Settling herself more firmly into her chair, Helda said again, dryly, “I see.” “I can’t see with my eyes,” Po said to Helda, perhaps a bit out of the blue,

I love the sass here

“Po,” she whispered, looking up at him. “I’m very wealthy, aren’t I?” Po came and crouched before her, dripping. “Giddon is wealthy,” he said. “I’m exceedingly wealthy, and Raffin is more. There’s no word for what you are, Bitterblue. And the money at your disposal is only a fraction of your power.”

“Did you know that Tilda and Bren live as a couple and they want Teddy to give them a baby?” he asked, swaying, wincing at the room as if he couldn’t remember how he got there.

Heck yeah fantasy wlw

Death was the punishment for treason. “That’s ridiculous,” Bitterblue hissed. “I would never let the High Court condemn Saf to death for stealing a crown.” “For treason, you mean, Lady Queen,” said Helda. “And you know as well as I do that even your own rulings may be overturned by a unanimous vote from your judges.” Yes. It was another of Ror’s funny provisions, this one to put a check on the monarch’s absolute power. “I’ll replace my judges,” she said. “I’ll make you a judge.” “A person Middluns-born cannot be a judge on the Monsean High Court, Lady Queen. I don’t need to tell you that the requirements for such an appointment are particular and extreme.”

Limits to absolute power meant to prevent cronyism. I think royal pardons are typical in real-world limited monarchies?

Finally, the pen held tight and the letters small, as if she were whispering, she wrote: I have been thinking about power a great deal lately. Po says that one of the privileges of wealth is that you don’t need to think about it. I think it’s the same with power. I feel powerless more often than I feel powerful. But I am powerful, aren’t I? I have the power to hurt my advisers with words and my friends with lies.

Why are you telling me this now? You were at that meeting, she wrote. You were practically in charge of that meeting! You could have objected! But this is a conversation you’re having with yourself, Lady Queen, Giddon said. I’m not actually here, am I? I’m not the one objecting. And Giddon faded away. Bitterblue was left with herself again, holding her strange letter to the fire, wound up in too many different kinds of confusion.

This almost felt like a hallucination

Ashen had made bad choices because of Leck’s fog. Bitterblue didn’t have that excuse; her bad choices were all her own doing.

Bitterblue is still living with trauma

“That’s not much of an apology,” said Saf, sliding down from his table, crossing his arms. Antagonism was helpful. It gave her guilt something solid and sharp to throw itself against.

“I came upon him very late. He didn’t seem himself, Lady Queen. He was wild-eyed, smiling too much, making me nervous. I followed him into that passage, hoping that if I stayed with him, I could learn what was wrong. When I pressed him, he told me he’d done something brilliant, but of course I didn’t know about the prisoners. Then he told me you’d gone out into the city and he’d sent a team to kill you.” “I see,” said Bitterblue. “Just like that, he told you?” “He was nothing like himself, Lady Queen,” Thiel said again, grasping his hair. “He seemed to have some crazy idea that I’d be pleased to hear what he was saying. Truly, I believe he’d gone mad.”

What the hell is going on??

“But that’s how memory works,” Bitterblue said quietly. “Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission.” And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.

Her memories of Ashen were a series of snippets. Many of them were moments that had transpired in Leck’s presence, which meant that Bitterblue had not even been in her right mind. When they’d been without Leck, they’d spent much of that time fighting Leck’s brain fog away. Leck hadn’t just stolen Ashen from Bitterblue by killing her. He’d stolen her before that, as well.

The river at Silverhart was full of bones. The bones had been discovered at the same time as Runnemood’s body, for, as it happened, the corpse had gotten hung up on what turned out, upon investigation, to be a reef of bones. Ice had then formed around the body and frozen solid, anchoring it into place.

Frozen bone reef is such a bizarre image

“Have you been very bored?” she asked him. “Oh, Lady Queen,” he said fervently, as if the question itself were relief from boredom. “I’ve been sitting in this room with nothing to do but think. It is paralyzing, Lady Queen, to have nothing to do but think.”

Thiel let out a long breath. “Lady Queen,” he said, “one of Leck’s cruelest legacies is that he left us unable to remember some things and unable to forget others. We are not masters of our minds.”

“There are no limits to the ways people you think you know can astonish you. I can’t explain the practice to you, Lady Queen. I wonder if it’s meant to be punishment for something one can’t forgive oneself for. Or an external expression, Lady Queen, of an internal pain? Or perhaps it’s a way to realize that you actually do want to stay alive.”

It is very powerful to discuss self-injury in a fantasy novel with such sensitivity

“Are you certain you want this?” he whispered, when it became clear what was happening. “Are you certain that you’re certain?” “Yes,” she whispered. “Are you?”

Good consent practices in fantasy novels 👍

She cried for the part of her soul that had been clinging to Thiel and had fallen with him into the water, the part of herself that he’d torn away when he’d jumped.

Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.

lmao

Madlen says I’m not to work until my head stops aching, but I believe it’s aching from lack of work.” “That sounds a bit unlikely, Death,” said Bitterblue gently, “seeing as you were bashed over the head.

Good concussion care

“Death,” she said. “You’re my librarian. If there’s something I can do that will bring you comfort, tell me what it is.” “Well,” he said. “I keep a bowl with water for Lovejoy under the desk, Lady Queen. It will certainly be empty, if it’s there at all. He’ll be disoriented by my absence, you see? He’ll think I abandoned him. He can manage feeding himself quite well on the library mice, but he does not venture outside the library and won’t know where to find water. He’s very fond of water, Lady Queen.”

"Please fill my cat's bowl and pet him."

Cautiously, she slid her hand halfway under the desk toward him, so that he could decide whether to approach or ignore. He chose attack. Yowling and swift, he swiped at her, then retreated again. Bitterblue held her bleeding hand to her chest, biting back her cries, because she didn’t blame him, and she knew how he felt.

A breath went around the room, a silence that seemed to ask if it too was worthy of forgiveness. Bitterblue felt the question from all of them, and stood there, scrambling for the answer. She couldn’t sentence every guilty man here to a term in prison and leave it at that, for that would change nothing about the truer problem in their hearts.

“One more thing,” she said. “I’ve said that I won’t make you revisit the time of King Leck, and I meant that. But there are people—lots of people—who see value in doing so. There are people who need to do so in order to recover. I don’t begrudge you your own need to heal in your own way, but you will not interfere with other people’s healing. I understand that what they do interferes with yours. I see the conundrum. But I will not tolerate any of you compounding Leck’s crimes with more crimes. Anyone who continues with this suppression will lose every bit of my loyalty. Do you understand?”

it’s easier to control what’s known when people can’t read.

“She was printing books and teaching people to read. She had papers and strange letter molds that frightened and confused us.” “And so you set it all on fire? Is that part of your method too? Destroy anything you don’t understand?”

“How could you be so careless with people?” she said, furious. “It is easier than you might think, Lady Queen,” said Rood. “It only requires a lack of thought, an avoidance of feeling, and the realization, when one does think or feel, that being careless with people is all one is good for.”

It wasn’t fair that nearly a decade after his death, Leck was still killing people. Leck was still tormenting the same people he’d tormented; people were committing appalling acts in order to erase the appalling acts they’d already committed.

So had her Minister of Roads and Maps, her Minister of Taxes, various lords, and the head of the Monsean Guard in Monport. So many members of the Monsean Guard had learned to turn a blind eye that it had been impossible for Rood and Darby to list them individually.

Of course the cops would be involved