It was, in fact, Po’s mother who came. She appraised the situation and produced a servant girl who swept Bitterblue off to another room, murmuring reassurances about the temperature of the water and curtsying as best she could with her arms full of towels.

Po’s mother stayed behind and sat beside Katsa on the bed. She clasped her hands in her lap. The rings on her fingers caught the light from the fireplace and drew Katsa’s eyes.

“Po told me you wear nineteen rings,” she heard herself saying, senselessly. She took a breath. She gripped her forehead and tried, for the hundredth time, to drive from her mind the image of Leck nailed to his chair by her dagger.

The queen opened her hands and considered her rings. She closed them again, and looked sideways at Katsa. “The others think you remembered the truth, suddenly, about Leck,” she said. “They think you remembered it suddenly and silenced him right away, before his lies caused you to forget again. And perhaps that is what happened. But I believe I understand why you found the strength to act at that moment.”

Katsa looked back at the woman, at her calm face and quiet, intelligent eyes. She answered the question she saw in those eyes. “Po has told me the truth of his Grace.”

“He must love you very much,” the queen said, so simply that Katsa started. Katsa ducked her head.

“I was very angry,” she said, “when first he told me. But I have . . . recovered from my anger.”

It was a woefully inadequate description of her feelings, this Katsa knew. But the queen watched her, and Katsa thought the woman understood some of what she didn’t say.

“Will you marry him?” the queen asked, so plainly that Katsa started again; but this she could answer as plainly. She looked into the queen’s eyes.

“I won’t ever marry,” she said.

The queen’s forehead creased in puzzlement, but she didn’t say anything. She hesitated, and then spoke. “You saved my son’s life in Monsea,” she said, “and you saved it again today. I’ll never forget it.”

She stood, bent forward, and kissed Katsa’s forehead, and for the third time since this woman’s arrival, Katsa started with surprise. The queen turned and left the room, her skirts sweeping through the doorway. As the door closed behind her, and Katsa stared at the blankness where Po’s mother had been, the image of Leck rose again into her mind.

Chapter Thirty-six

KATSA KEPT to a far corner of the deck as Bear and Red and a number of other men hauled the ropes that swung Leck’s coffin on board. She wished to have nothing to do with it, wished even that the ropes would snap and pitch Leck’s body into the sea, to be torn apart by sea creatures. She climbed up the mast and sat alone in the riggings.

It was a grand procession of royalty that charted a course now to Monsea. For not only was Bitterblue a queen, but Prince Skye and King Ror attended her. His sister’s child, Ror had pointed out, was a child. And even if she weren’t, she returned to an impossible situation. A kingdom deeply under a spell; a kingdom that believed its king to be virtuous and its princess to be ill, weak, possibly even mad. The child queen could not be sent off trippingly to Monsea to announce that she was now in charge, and denounce the dead king an entire kingdom adored. Bitterblue would need authority, and she would need guidance. Both of these Ror could provide.