Bitterblue (Graceling Realm, #3)

by Kristin Cashore

“I mean what I said, Lady Queen. Leck’s symbols are the letters of a whole other language. This is the lexicon of our shared languages: all the words of our language translated into their language, and all the words of theirs translated into ours.

“I believe King Leck wrote in cipher in this other language.”

Lienid’s seclusion from the five inner kingdoms was the luxury of an island kingdom, but she thought perhaps it was a trifle disingenuous on Ror’s part. Ror’s niece was the Monsean queen and his son a Council leader, Ror’s kingdom was the seven kingdoms’ wealthiest and most just, and at a time when kings were being deposed and kingdoms being born again on shaky legs, Ror had the potential to be a powerful example for the rest of the world.

“They call their language by a name we might pronounce as ‘Dellian,’ Lady Queen. And they—or, at any rate, Leck—calls ours, more or less, ‘Gracelingian.’”

In the bakery, leaning over the bread dough, pushing and shaping it into an elastic thing, she began to find clarity on one point: Like Death, Bitterblue also had a taste for difficult—impossible—slow—messy work. She would figure out how to be queen, slowly, messily. She could reshape what it meant to be queen, and reshaping what it meant to be queen would reshape the kingdom.

“Not really, not yet. In a hundred years it will be history. Now it’s our own story.”

“You set it up from the beginning, didn’t you? Forward-thinkingness actually meant suppression of the past. Danzhol, before I killed him, intimated that the town charters were intended to keep me from digging into the truth of what happened in my towns, and I laughed at him, but that’s exactly what they were meant to do, isn’t it? Push the past under the rug and pretend it’s possible to make a fresh start. The blanket pardons for all crimes committed in Leck’s time too. The lack of education in the schools, because it’s easier to control what’s known when people can’t read. And, worst of all, the specific targeting of anyone working against you. Right?” she said.

“We were the ones in charge, Lady Queen,” Rood whispered again. “Your four advisers. We passed down the orders. But others have been deeply involved.” “Thiel and Runnemood were more culpable than we were,” said Darby.

“She says that Leck kidnapped her, Bitterblue, and murdered one of her friends, a very long time ago. She believes this is a scene from the kidnapping, for that is the coat he gave her to wear, and they passed through a forest of white trees. Afterwards, she escaped, and fought him. In the fight, he fell through a crack in the ground, then presumably followed a tunnel that brought him to Monsea. She’s moved to tell you how sorry she is that he found his way back here, and did harm to your kingdom. The Dells only discovered the seven kingdoms fifteen years ago, and the only tunnels they’ve known until now have brought them into far eastern Estill, so they were some time in discovering the problems in Monsea. She’s sorry for letting Leck return and for not helping Monsea to defeat him.”

“Leck was not Dellian. She doesn’t know if he was Monsean, only that he was from the seven kingdoms. There are no Gracelings in the Dells,” Katsa added, speaking for herself now.

The Dellians described what it had been like to discover a world to their west. The Dells knew war, and the Dellian king had no wish for it. And so, discovering a land of seven kingdoms in which too many of the kings were warmongers, the Dellians had chosen secret exploration, rather than making themselves immediately known. They were exploring eastward as well.

“Fire is the sister-in-law of the king and the stepmother of the woman who commands the Dellian Army, Bitterblue,” yelled Po, his face jammed into the carpet.