“She’s refusing a party,” Helda said. “She doesn’t want a big dinner, either. She wants her usual, quiet dinner here with her friends, and for us to act as if she isn’t the most important woman in the world. Well, I know she loves sweets. But she never admits a preference. She wants all her cooks to feel equally wonderful. She takes care of everyone, all the time! How am I to make her feel taken care of on her birthday?”
“Um, excuse me, Helda,” Giddon said, glancing around conspiratorially to make sure he wasn’t overheard. “All three layers should be chocolate, with buttercream frosting. And encircle it with bite-sized vanilla cream puffs.”
Helda narrowed eyes on Giddon that contained a certain spark of interest. She leaned back. “And how do you know that, Giddon?”
“She gets very quiet and focused when we have those things at dinner,” Giddon said. “And she scrapes her plate clean. Haven’t you noticed?”
The next look Helda gave him made him flush with heat and decide he was needed elsewhere urgently. But on the night of Bitterblue’s birthday, the chocolate cake and cream puffs made Bitterblue take Helda into her arms and kiss her cheek. Giddon couldn’t stay that night, because he had more people to shepherd out of Estill. But he was able to leave knowing that her long day had been punctuated by a small delight, because of him.
Always, Giddon was careful not to look too closely at how those moments felt. He understood the pointlessness of it. Bitterblue was a queen, which meant she was expected to marry a man. Her advisers thrust men at her constantly, and he’d noticed that none of them were disinherited, banished lords. He knew she tried her best to like some of them. He even knew, because she made no secret of it with him, when she involved herself with any of them, or with anyone else.
Sometimes, she came to him for advice. He was almost nine years older and she wanted the benefit of his experience. This made him feel ancient.
“Have you ever been quite in love with someone,” she asked him once, a couple years back when she’d been seeing some lord from the southern coast, “then realized they’re not actually as kind or grown-up as you thought? And in fact, you were in love with an idea of who you thought they were, instead of who they actually are? And now you have to tell them so, but there’s no point in being hurtful?”
And yes, he had been in that situation. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d been on both sides of that situation. But it was hard to trust his own best instincts in giving her advice, since in those moments, it became achingly clear to him how badly he wanted her to jettison whatever man she was talking about.
But he considered the question seriously, because she looked unhappy, and because she trusted him.
“I know it’s hard to feel like you’re being kind,” he said, “when the truth you need to tell is going to be hurtful. There’s just no way around that. But when I look back, I most appreciate the people who were straightforward about it, you know?” Even a little merciless, if he was being honest, but he didn’t say that out loud. He didn’t trust his own intentions in advising Bitterblue to be merciless with some man she was kicking out of her bed. “It’s good to avoid ambiguity,” he said. “It helps everyone move on.”
And then he waited, with various levels of agitation and self-enforced patience, until the man in question stopped being talked of, disappeared from court, and seemed unmissed. And then the next one came along, and he felt his age, the small income the Council granted him, his unworthiness, again. She was probably going to marry Katu Cavenda, once they figured out where he’d gone. Or she’d marry some earl, or at any rate, some man with a fortune and an unblemished past who deserved her, as much as anyone could deserve her. A good man.
Giddon had discovered, in his Council travels, that he could be many different men, depending on whom he was with and what they needed from him. He didn’t like all the Giddons he could be. Some were manipulative or forceful. Some were even violent, which always reminded him uncomfortably of his past, for in his life before the Council, Giddon had been a bully on behalf of King Randa. Long, long before the Council had made him understand some things about himself, and kings, and power, and bullies, he’d been a small-minded man who did small things. Bitterblue knew. He didn’t have many secrets Bitterblue didn’t know. He was lucky she considered him a friend.
This is enough, he thought. A life where I’m helping people, tricking corrupt kings, even dismantling monarchies is enough. What sense would it make anyway, for a queen to marry a lawbreaker? And then he would tell himself that it was time to write to Raffin and Bann, Katsa and Po, and propose a new assignment for himself, somewhere else.
Somehow, though, he never found the time to write those letters.
* * *
—
Late one morning in August, three months after Saf’s letter had arrived, Bitterblue came to Giddon’s door.
Minutes before, he’d returned from the tunnels again; he’d just stripped off his shirt and dropped into bed when she knocked. He smelled like horses and mud. In fact, as he blundered across the room to answer the door, he found a streak of mud on his chest, which didn’t even make sense. It wasn’t like he led Estillans through the tunnels shirtless.
Then he opened the door, saw Bitterblue, and woke up.
She blinked at him. “Oh good,” she said. “I heard a rumor you were back.”
“Come in while I find a shirt,” he said.
“Don’t do it for my sake,” she said, which was one of the only flirtatious things she’d ever said to him in their entire acquaintance and subsequently threw him into such confusion that he decided to disappear into his bathing room on the pretense of cleaning up. Luckily he was filthy, so it was a believable retreat. Of course, while he was splashing water on himself, Lovejoy burst through the open window, nearly giving him a heart attack.
When he came out a moment later, dressed and with what he hoped was an imperturbable expression, Bitterblue was curled up in his big chair with Lovejoy purring in her lap. It made his heart hurt.
She waved a letter at him. “You know Skye’s in Winterkeep now?” she said. “He’s written a letter and I haven’t opened it yet. I wanted to read it with you. In case it’s bad news.”
He paused, studying her. “You’re worried about Katu,” he said. “You’re serious about Katu, aren’t you?”
“I’m serious about making sure he’s okay,” she said, that pucker appearing between her eyebrows. “And I’m terrified of learning that my men were drowned on purpose. If they were, I won’t be able to forgive myself.”
“Bitterblue,” he said, sitting on the big chair beside her. “If something like that happened, then it’s entirely the responsibility of the person who drowned them.”