“I know,” she said, then raised her eyes to his face. “But you know how it is.”
Of course he did. The queen felt responsible for everyone. “I know.”
She opened the letter and held the page out for him to see, her fingers flashing with gold. “The key is ‘bratty little brother,’” she said, which was adorable, as it had to be a reference to Skye’s brother Po, who was a grown man and the furthest thing from a brat. But it was also superfluous information, as Bitterblue would decipher the entire letter in the time it took Giddon to make out the first line.
“Saf’s decided Katu really has left Winterkeep without saying goodbye,” she said grimly, reading. “Katu left no forwarding address and his boat is gone. His family and friends say he’s off adventuring, as usual. Saf checked with Katu’s banker and apparently Katu’s drawn money from banks in Kamassar and Borza, with his own checks.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Giddon said.
“But how could he leave without canceling his appointment with Saf?” said Bitterblue. “And without writing to me?”
“Maybe he wrote to you and his letter got lost.”
“Yes, maybe,” she said, still deciphering the letter. “I hope so. Skye says here that Saf has been swimming with the silbercows.”
“The telepathic seals, or whatever they are?”
“They’re bigger than seals, and purple, but yes. He says the silbercows keep showing Saf an image of a many-windowed house on a cliff, and a shadow in the sky that looks like an airship. Then, a disturbance in the water nearby. A serious disturbance. Like, everything changes.”
“What do you mean? Changes how?”
“He says that in the image, the ocean is normal, then suddenly there’s a blinding light and no water and the silbercows are in pain.”
“Okay,” said Giddon, to whom that meant nothing. “All we need now is a vague remark about zilfium and the letter will be completely incomprehensible.”
“He says that now the Katu mystery is solved, he and Saf are going to Mantiper together. The Mantiperans are looking for a sea passage east to Lienid. Saf and Skye are going to join the efforts.”
Mantiper was the Torlan nation farthest from Winterkeep, so far east that Saf and Skye would likely be gone for a long time, sailing in uncharted waters. “That sounds dangerous.”
“Yes. But it sounds like they’re happy,” Bitterblue said with a small, winsome smile. “Ah,” she added. “Here’s a bit about zilfium. He says that no one in the Keepish government likes to talk about this, but the Torlan continent is running low on zilfium. Some mines in Winterkeep and Kamassar are closing.” Then she stopped, stared. Something changed in her face. “Giddon,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Saf says zilfium is most often found near native silver.”
“What does that mean?”
“Zilfium rock and native silver are formed by the same geologic activity. Where there’s native silver, there’s likely to be zilfium.”
“Okay,” said Giddon, not understanding why her face grew oddly furious. Then remembering that the largest and richest deposits of native silver on the Royal Continent were in Monsea.
“Do you think that the mountains in Monsea have zilfium?” he asked her cautiously.
“Would you excuse me for a minute?” she said, standing stiffly, so that the cat went sprawling.
“Of course,” he said, but she was already at the door, the cat yowling around her feet. A moment later, the door slammed behind them both.
Abruptly alone, Giddon didn’t know what to do with himself. He was so exhausted that while he was trying to decide, he began to fall asleep in the big chair. He’d just made it across the room and fallen onto the bed when she knocked again, then came storming in without waiting for his answer. She stopped in the middle of the room and stood there with her eyes on fire and her fists clenched, and Giddon was amazed, as he always was when she was angry, at how much power, fury, and force her person could convey.
“Do you know,” she said, “that a number of different Keepish importers have been buying the rock detritus from my silver mines for the past three years, for almost no money?”
“What?” said Giddon blearily, stupidly, but then he understood.
She pulled a piece of paper out of a pocket and waved it at him. “I thought it was odd,” she said, her voice rising, “but I’ve been too busy to focus on it. I figured they used it for some building process. Winterkeep doesn’t have our mountains, they don’t have our rock.”
“Of course,” said Giddon. “It was natural for you not to focus on it.”
“They have been stealing our zilfium!” she practically yelled, her body electric with rage. “They’ve been taking advantage of our ignorance of a resource far more valuable than silver! Tricking me, our miners, our scientists. You should see the names on this list! It’s practically every important family in Ledra! Balava Importing. Tima Importing. There’s even a Cavenda company on this list, probably some horrible relation of Katu’s! What kind of people do this? What kind of nation? My kingdom can’t help its backwardness,” she cried. “We were trapped under the reign of a psychopath who made monuments to himself and buried science and burned books and murdered anyone who tried to break free of it, for thirty-five years! Winterkeep has airships and brilliant schools and brilliant industries and I can’t even teach my people to read! And they saw that, and they saw my silver mines, and they decided to trick me out of wealth I had that I could’ve used. To fund a school, one as brilliant as the Winterkeep Academy!”
Giddon knew the tears running down her face were tears of fury. At the Keepish; at her father, King Leck; at her life; on behalf of the lives of everyone in Monsea who’d suffered. He went to her and put his arms around her.
“Tell me whom to kill,” he said.
That made her laugh, and the laughter transitioned her to the other kind of crying. The harder kind for Giddon, because it was about her grief, and he couldn’t lessen that.
“You’re doing everything any human being could do for Monsea,” he said. “More. You are being amazing.”
“Giddon,” she said, soaking his shirt with her tears. “What if Mikka and Brek died because they were going to tell me that my own nation is rich with zilfium?”
“Then someone in Winterkeep is a murderer and is going to pay,” he said.
“But I sent them there.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But—”