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It’s easier to plan than to be planned against, trust me.
And what would you all think of a Ministry of Mental Well-being?” she asked. “Has there ever been such a thing?
And so the interviews of her guards and clerks commenced, and Bitterblue found the ideas growing in a way that began to challenge the expediency of paper. Ideas were growing in all directions and dimensions; they were becoming a sculpture, or a castle.
If she couldn’t have anyone’s arms around her as she fell asleep, then she could have the voices of these friends. She would wrap the voices around her and it would be like Saf’s arms; it would be like Katsa’s arms when they’d slept on the frozen mountain. Katsa. How acutely she missed Katsa. How acutely sometimes the presence or absence of people mattered. She would have fought Po tonight for Katsa’s arms.
“No,” Po said again. “Bitterblue, think about what you’re saying. Darby did not kill himself because you sent him to prison.” “They’re so fragile. I can’t bear it. There’s no way to stop them, if that’s what they have in mind to do. There’s nothing you can threaten them with. I should have been more gentle. I should have let him stay on.” “Bitterblue,” said Po again. “This was not your doing.” “It was Leck’s doing,” said Helda, kneeling beside them. “Still Leck’s doing.”
Bitterblue said, “I want to turn into something I’m not, Hava. Like you do, or like one of your mother’s sculptures.” Hava walked to the windows beyond the sculptures, windows that looked out over the great courtyard. “I remain myself, Lady Queen,” she said. “It’s only other people who think I’m something I’m not. Which only reinforces, every time, the thing I am, which is a pretender.”
“But how does she heal so well? Are all healers in the Dells truly so gifted?” Katsa translated. “Medical knowledge is highly advanced there, Bitterblue. Medicines grow there that we don’t have here, especially in the west, which is where Madlen is from, and science is paramount. Madlen has been kept supplied with the best Dellian medicines during her time here, to keep up her pretense.”
Bitterblue understood then, something about how a person could lie and tell the truth at the same time. Madlen had made something of a fool of her. But Madlen’s care of Bitterblue’s body, and of her heart, had been genuine.
IT WAS SOOTHING, when so little else in the world lent itself to clarity, to make lists of tasks that needed execution, then choose a person to entrust with each task.
“Move over,” she said to Po, shoving his legs. “Hello,” he said. “Would it kill you to ask nicely?” “I’ve been asking you nicely for at least ten seconds and you’ve been ignoring me. Move over. I want to sit down.” Po made a show of beginning to move out of the way, then flipped himself off the sofa and flattened her. “So predictable,” Bitterblue muttered as the two of them began wrestling on the rug.
Katsa now sat calmly on the stomach of her vanquished foe. “He was handsome,” she said. Po moaned. “Was he beat-to-a-pulp handsome, or perhaps just push-down-a-flight-of-stairs handsome?” “I would not push a seventy-six-year-old man down a flight of stairs,” said Katsa indignantly.
“Which is a name she remembers from almost fifty years ago,” Death said sarcastically, “spoken to her, not spelled, presumably not a name from her own language, and conveyed to you mentally fifty years later. And I’m to recall every instance of a name of that nature in all the birth records available to me from the relevant year for all seven kingdoms, on the extremely slim chance that we have the name right and a record exists?” “I know you’re just as happy as I am,” said Bitterblue.
Fire paused, considering Bitterblue as she stood, small and quiet, in the window. Why did he steal your crown? Because, Bitterblue whispered. He loved me and I hurt him.
IT WAS A pleasure to watch Po and Skye come together. Bitterblue couldn’t explain why her heart swelled to see brothers kiss and hug each other, but it made her feel as if the world wasn’t hopeless.
She made herself watch his soft eyes. “If you weren’t in trouble about the crown thing,” she said, “would you still go away?” The question made his eyes softer. “Yes.” She had known the answer before she’d asked. But hearing it still hurt. “My turn,” he said. “Would you stop being the queen for me?” “Of course not.” “There, now,” he said. “We’ve both asked each other the same question.” “We haven’t.” “Have too,” he said. “You asked me to stay, and I asked you to come with me.”
“I wish people would stop hitting Po,” whispered Bitterblue. “Well,” Giddon said. “Yes. I’m hoping Skye is following my model. Punch Po; go on a long trip; feel better; come back and make up.”
She’d been reading a report from Death when Skye had arrived. She was in her bed that night when she finally picked it up again. He does kill Bellamew, as he has been threatening to do for some time. He kills her because he sees her, in an unguarded moment, with a child that she has claimed has been dead for years.
Over days and weeks, he searches for the child but cannot find her, and simultaneously, his desire to be alone with you begins to grow. He begins to write of molding you into a perfect queen, and of both you and Ashen becoming increasingly unaccommodating. He writes of the anticipatory pleasure he feels in being patient.
Leck intended to sexually abuse Hava and Bitterblue
This is the sort of intimate and painful information I would not normally burden you with, Lady Queen, except that the implications, when one considers everything together, seem significant, and I thought you would like to know them. If you will remember, Lady Queen, Bellamew and Queen Ashen were two victims Leck claimed to have “kept for himself.” And his preoccupation with this child is striking, is it not?
“Did you know,” he said, peering up at her, “that in Nander, they’ve decided they don’t want a king?” “What?” she said. “No king at all?” “Yes,” he said. “The committee of nobles will continue to rule by vote, alongside another committee of equal power that will be comprised of representatives elected by the people.” “You mean like a sort of . . . aristocratic and democratic republic?” said Bitterblue, plucking terms from the book about monarchy and tyranny.
What an English republic might initially look like, if royalty were abolished.
“Fascinating. Did you know that in the Dells, a man can take a husband and a woman can take a wife? Fire told me so.” “Mnph,” he said, then focused his eyes on her quietly. “Is that true?” “It is. And the king himself is married to a woman who hasn’t a drop of noble blood in her veins.”
You can have Bann as your husband <3
Finally, Raffin said, “That’s not the way of things in the Middluns.” “No,” said Bitterblue. “But it is the way in the Middluns for the king to do as he likes.” Raffin stood, knees cracking, and came to her. “My father is a healthy man,” he said. “Oh, Raffin,” she said. “May I give you a hug?”
Raffin can someday be a king with a husband
She had one more ministry to build. Of all of her ministries, it would be the one with which she would take the most care. She wouldn’t force it on anyone, but she would make its existence widely known. It would be a ministry for all the people whose pain could be acknowledged, maybe even eased, by the telling and recording of what their own experiences had been. It would have a space of its own in the castle, a library where stories were kept, and a minister and staff that her friends would help her choose. Some of the staff would travel, to reach people who couldn’t come to the city. It
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A ministry dedicated to healing trauma by sharing stories
DARBY (MONSEA): Adviser to Queen Bitterblue in the years following King Leck’s death. Grace: never sleeping.
(Cipher enthusiasts will recognize the Vigenère ciphering method I chose for Leck’s journals.) Lance also helped me get my head around how to navigate mazes (along with Deborah Kaplan) and how to tell time on a fifteen-hour watch, so thanks for that, as well!
Thanks to former physicist JD Paul, who answered an endless stream of questions about Po and optics so that I could determine whether Po was likely to be able to discern color or know when it’s night or day.
(I was not thinking about disability politics back then. It didn’t occur to me, until it was too late, that I had disabled Po, then given him a magical cure for his disability—thus implying that he couldn’t be a whole person and also be disabled. I now understand that the magical cure trope is all too common in F/SF writing and is disrespectful to people with disabilities. My failings here are all my own.)
Yes!
Thanks to Kelly Droney and Melissa Murphy for answering strange questions about what happens to corpses in caves and bones thrown into rivers.
I tell this story because I want to get this message across: THAT’S HOW IT FEELS TO BE A WRITER. It doesn’t mean your book will never become what you want it to be. It doesn’t mean you’re not talented; it doesn’t mean you’re wasting your time; it doesn’t mean your book isn’t about anything; it doesn’t mean you should give up. It only means that you’re writing.
