"They are missing, Lady Queen," he said, enunciating each syllable.
"Missing! What do you mean?"
"I mean that they're not on the shelves where they belong, Lady Queen," he said, "and now I shall have to take time away from my more important work to locate them."
"Hm," Bitterblue said, suddenly not trusting him. Perhaps the pamphlets had never existed. Perhaps Death had read her list of puzzle pieces and made up the entire tale for his own amusement. She certainly hoped not, since he claimed to be restoring—accurately—truths Leck had erased.
THE NEXT TIME Death interrupted her, Bitterblue had dozed off, her cheek pillowed on The Kissing Traditions.
"Lady Queen?"
Gasping, Bitterblue shot upright too fast, so that a muscle in her neck pulled and tightened. Ow. Where—
She'd been dreaming. As she woke, the dream fled, as dreams do, and she grabbed at it: her mother, embroidering, reading. Doing both at once? No, Ashen had been embroidering, her fingers like lightning, while Bitterblue had read aloud from a book Ashen had chosen, a difficult book, but fascinating in the moments that Bitterblue understood it. Until Leck had found them sitting together and asked about the book, listened to Bitterblue's explanation, then laughed and kissed Bitterblue's cheek and neck and throat and taken the book away and thrown it into the fire.
Yes. Now she remembered the destruction of The Book of Ciphers.
Bitterblue wiped at her throat, which felt dirty. She massaged the sore knot of muscle in her neck, slightly drunk with departing sleep and with the sense that she wasn't entirely attached to the earth. "What is it now, Death?"
"Pardon me for interrupting your nap, Lady Queen," he said, looking down his nose.
"Oh, don't be a twit, Death."
Death cleared his throat noisily. "Lady Queen," he said. "Is the rereading of your childhood books a project you still wish to pursue? If so, I have here a collection of tall tales about fabulous medical recoveries."
"From my father?"
"Yes, Lady Queen."
Bitterblue sat up straight and shuffled through the manuscripts on the table, looking for the two books about medicine that Death had rewritten. The rewritten books were not tall tales, but factual. "And so, he obliterated some medical books from existence but encouraged me to read others?"
"If it exists in my mind, Lady Queen," Death said, offended, "then it is not obliterated."
"Of course," she said, sighing. "Very well. I'll find time for it. What time is it now? I'd better go back to my office, before they come looking for me."
But when Bitterblue stepped into the great courtyard, she saw Giddon sitting on the edge of the pool, hands propped on knees. He was talking easily to a woman who seemed to be shaping the rump of a rearing shrubbery horse with shears. Dyan, the head gardener. Not far from them, Fox dangled from the high limbs of a tree, pruning the flowering ivy, dropping a shower of dark, overripe petals. "Fox," said Bitterblue, walking over with a pile of books and papers in her arms, craning her neck. "You work everywhere, don't you?"
"Wherever I'm useful, Lady Queen," said Fox, blinking down at her with those uneven gray eyes, her hair bright against the leaves. She smiled.
The green horse Dyan was working on rose from the bases of two shrubberies planted close together. Flowering ivy swirled across its rearing chest and trailed down its legs. "No, don't get up," Bitterblue said to Dyan and Giddon as she reached them, but Giddon already had, holding out a hand to help her with her armload. "Very well—here," she said, passing him the two medical rewrites and the reread, then sitting so that she could bind the pages of The Kissing Traditions safely back into their leather cover. "Are the shrubberies your design, Dyan?" she asked, glancing at the horse, which really was rather impressive.
"They were the design of King Leck's gardener, Lady Queen," Dyan said shortly, "and of King Leck himself. I merely maintain them."
"You were not King Leck's gardener?"
"My father was King Leck's gardener, Lady Queen. My father is dead," Dyan said, then gave an oof as she rose and stumped across the courtyard to a man-shaped shrubbery with flowering blue hair.
"Well," Bitterblue said to Giddon, a bit deflated. "It's always nice to hear of someone new one's father has murdered."
"She was rude to you," said Giddon apologetically, sitting back down beside her.
"I hope I didn't interrupt anything."
"No, Lady Queen," said Giddon. "I was only telling her about my home."
"You come from the grasslands of the Middluns, don't you, Giddon?"
"Yes, Lady Queen, west of Randa City."
"Is it very nice, your home?"
"I think so, Lady Queen. It's my favorite patch of land in all seven kingdoms," he said, leaning back, beginning to smile.
His face was transformed and quite suddenly, the more pleasant traditions of Monsea's light festivals came to her mind. She wondered if Giddon shared a woman's bed here at court, or a man's. Flushing now, she asked hastily, "How is your planning going?"
"It's coming along," Giddon said, pitching his voice low, directing his eyebrows significantly to where Fox was still pruning. The noise of the fountain muffled his voice. "We're going to send someone through Piper's tunnel to make contact with the Estillan rebels who asked for our help. And there may be a second tunnel that leads to a place near one of Thigpen's army bases in the eastern Estillan mountains. One of us is going to see if that tunnel is a reality. It's been poked at from both ends, but no one seems to have followed it all the way through from one end to the other."
"Katsa?" said Bitterblue. "Or Po?"
"Katsa will search for the second tunnel," said Giddon. "Po or I will head through the first tunnel to make contact. More likely, we'll both go together."
"Is Po going to be a bit conspicuous, appearing suddenly in Estill, meeting with commoners and asking pointed questions? He's a bit of a glowing Lienid peacock, isn't he?"
"Po is impossible to disguise," he said. "But he also has a knack for sneaking around. And he's oddly good at getting people talking," he added, with something significant in his voice that made Bitterblue watch her hands for a beat, rather than his eyes, afraid of what her own eyes might convey.
She sent a burst of unpleasantness to Po. You realize he puts himself into danger alongside you, don't you? Shouldn't he know the skills his partner possesses? Do you think he won't find out one day? Or that when he does, he won't mind? Then she dropped her head into her hands and gripped her hair.
"Lady Queen," Giddon said. "Are you all right?"
She was not all right; she was having a crisis that had nothing to do with Po's lies and only with her own. "Giddon," she said, "I'm going to try an experiment on you that I've never tried on anyone else."
"Very well," he said good-humoredly. "Should I wear a helmet?"
"Maybe," she said, grinning, "if Katsa ever announces that she's trying an experiment. I only meant that I'd like to have someone I never lie to. From now on, you're it. I won't even equivocate to you. I'll either tell you the truth or say nothing at all."
"Huh," said Giddon, scratching his head. "I'll have to think up a lot of nosy questions."
"Don't push your luck. I wouldn't even try this if you were in the habit of asking me nosy questions. It also helps that you're not my adviser, my cousin, or my servant; you're not even Monsean, so you've no imaginary moral obligation to interfere with my business. Nor do I think you'll run off and tell Po all I say."
"Or even think about telling Po all you say," Giddon said, his tone so perfectly nonchalant that it raised hairs on the back of her neck. Po, she thought, shivering, for goodness sake. Tell him what he already knows.