“Papa, didn’t you have a message for Giddon?” said Ranie.
“Oh, yes,” said the man, blinking as if waking, then seeming startled by the volume of his own voice. The tunnels could do that, lull you into a sense of being inside yourself. Conversation could seem like violence.
“It’s a message about those two Monseans whose ship went down in Winterkeep,” said the man. “You know about that ship, the Seashell?”
Giddon suddenly saw Queen Bitterblue at the door to his rooms, clutching a letter, her tear-strewn face upturned to him. Bitterblue’s envoy to Winterkeep, Mikka, and one of her advisers, Brek, had died in that shipwreck on the other side of the world. And it had been an accident—Giddon had assured her over and over, hugging her in his doorway—but still, she’d blamed herself, for she’d been the one who’d sent those men away, to a death so far from home.
“Yes,” Giddon said grimly. “I know about the drowned Monseans.”
“I’m supposed to tell you that they had some news about something called zilfium.”
“News about zilfium?” said Giddon, who found this message rather opaque. Zilfium, to the best of his memory, was a kind of fuel that was important in Winterkeep, but he couldn’t remember why. “What news?”
“I don’t know,” said the man. “I only know that they wanted to tell Queen Bitterblue some news about zilfium, but then they went sailing that day and drowned. So the queen should learn what she can about zilfium.”
“Who told you to tell me this?” said Giddon.
“The man who brought us to the start of the tunnels, where you met us,” he said. “Bann, the one who’s the consort of Prince Raffin of the Middluns. He said he had it from Prince Raffin, who had it from a letter one of the Monseans wrote to him before he drowned.”
Council messages were often passed like this—from mouth to mouth. “Did Bann give you anything for me in writing?”
“No, nothing,” said the man. “Only what I’ve said: that before that ship went down, the Monseans had wanted to tell Queen Bitterblue some news about zilfium, so maybe Queen Bitterblue should look into zilfium.”
This message was intensely annoying, and Giddon didn’t think it was merely because he was wet and exhausted and carrying a child made of lead. One, he didn’t understand it. Two, he suspected some part of it was missing. And three, the reminder of her dead men was probably going to make Bitterblue cry.
Ranie was walking close to him again, and speaking so quietly that he had to bend down to her. He began to wonder if she might be doing this on purpose.
“What’s zilfium, Giddon?” she asked.
A stream of icy water hit the back of his neck. “I’m not sure,” he said crossly.
“She is doing it on purpose,” said Selie sleepily in his ear, making him jump. He’d been sure the child was asleep.
“Doing what?” he said, somehow finding this to be the most aggravating thing yet. Mind readers!
“Ranie’s talking in a low voice so you’ll get close to her,” Selie whispered, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “Also, I know your girlfriend is imaginary.”
“Oh? And do you know you’re as heavy as a horse?”
Selie was giggling. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I won’t tell.”
* * *
—
When, hours later, the party emerged from the tunnels into the pink morning light of the Monsean forest, tears began to stream down the face of Selie’s mother. She crouched onto a carpet of rotting leaves, sat, and said, “I just need to rest my feet for a moment, children.”
“Let me take a look,” said Giddon, lowering Selie stiffly to the ground. Selie made a protesting noise, clinging to him. “I need you to walk now, Selie,” he said. “You see the forest? This is Monsea. What do you think?”
The forest here was practically identical to the forest in Estill where they’d entered the tunnels: tall, thick trees with the pale green buds of early summer, dark, scraggy pines. Wind, birdsong, trickling water, squirrels.
But Selie began to cry. “It’s ugly,” she said, and Giddon understood. It was the nature of escape. A person consumed with the need to flee didn’t have the luxury of realizing how far away her home would seem, once she stopped running.
“Come, Selie,” said her mother, holding an arm out to the child. “Come keep me company while Giddon prods at my feet.”
“Your faith in my abilities is touching,” said Giddon. “Let me just go collect some sharp sticks to stab them with.”
Selie, still crying but now also giggling, tucked herself against her mother’s side, where she sniffled, receiving kisses, while Giddon took off her mother’s shoes. When he found her feet so bloody that it would be difficult to remove her socks without pulling her skin away, he chided himself for not checking sooner. Then he considered the distance still to go. The contact Giddon was bringing them to would have clean, fresh water, medicines, a bed for this woman to lie down upon. It wasn’t far, and the others seemed able to walk.
The baby was fussing. The woman reached her free arm out for the infant, then gave him her breast. The father and Ranie hovered nearby, as if wanting to be useful.
It would be best to wait to remove these socks. Thank goodness I’m big, Giddon thought.
When the baby was done feeding, the woman handed him back to her husband. Then Giddon gave her a pill for pain, lifted her into his arms, and carried her the rest of the way.
Chapter Two
It was late morning when Giddon, finally alone, caught sight of the bridges that crossed the river to Bitterblue City. It meant he was almost to his bed. He was riding a horse the Council contact had lent him and his thoughts were sluggish; he was trying to push thinking aside for now, with plans to welcome it back after he’d slept. But he couldn’t stop all thoughts, like, for example, the realization of how nice it was to be carried by this wonderful horse after hours of carrying others. Nor could he avoid thoughts of Bitterblue as he directed the horse onto the white-and-blue marble road of Winged Bridge.
Bitterblue had lost one of her advisers on this bridge. She’d tried to stop him, all by herself in a snowstorm, but her adviser had thrown himself over the edge. She’d been only eighteen. That suicide had been one of the legacies of the reign of Bitterblue’s father, King Leck, who’d been a terror, a psychopath. Five years later, things were better for Bitterblue, but she still carried the weight of all the damage her father had done to Monsea. There’d been no one to carry Bitterblue through it all. She’d carried herself, and now she carried her kingdom.