“How would I know?” Bitterblue exclaimed. “What do I know about the people and their businesses?”

Sometimes she felt lost behind this desk in the middle of the room, this desk that was so big for her smallness. She could hear every word they were being tactful enough not to say: that she’d made a fool of herself; that she’d proven the queen to be young, silly, and naïve about her station. It had seemed a powerful thing to say at the time. Were her instincts so terrible?

“It’s all right, Bitterblue,” said Thiel, more gently now. “We can move on from this.”

There was kindness in the use of her name rather than her title. The glacier showing its willingness to recede. Bitterblue looked into the eyes of her top adviser and saw that he was worried, anxious that he’d harangued her too much. “I’ll make no more declarations without consulting you first,” she said quietly.

“There now,” said Thiel, relieved. “See? That’s a wise decision. Wisdom is queenly, Lady Queen.”

FOR AN HOUR or so, Thiel kept her captive behind towers of paper. Runnemood, in contrast, circled along the windows, exclaiming at the pink light, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and distracting her with tales of consummately happy illiterate people. Finally, mercifully, he went away to some evening meeting with city lords. Runnemood was a pleasant man to look at and an adviser she needed, the one most adept at warding away ministers and lords who wished to talk Bitterblue’s ear off with requests, complaints, and obeisances. But that was because he himself knew how to be pushy with words. His younger brother, Rood, was also one of Bitterblue’s advisers. The two brothers, Thiel, and her secretary and fourth adviser, Darby, were all about sixty or so, though Runnemood didn’t look it. The others did. All four had been advisers to Leck. “Were we short-staffed today?” Bitterblue asked Thiel. “I don’t remember seeing Rood.”

“Rood is resting today,” said Thiel. “And Darby is unwell.”

“Ah.” Bitterblue understood the code: Rood was having one of his nervous episodes and Darby was drunk. She rested her forehead on the desk for a moment, afraid that otherwise she’d laugh. What would her uncle, who was the King of Lienid, think of the state of her advisers? King Ror had chosen these men as her team, judging them, on the basis of their previous experience, to be the men most knowledgeable about the kingdom’s needs for recovery. Would their behavior today surprise him? Or were Ror’s own advisers equally colorful? Perhaps this was the way in all seven kingdoms.

And perhaps it didn’t matter. She had nothing to complain of when it came to her advisers’ productivity, except perhaps that they were too productive. The paper that piled itself on her desk every day, every hour, was the evidence: taxes levied, court judgments rendered, prisons proposed, laws enacted, towns chartered; paper, paper, until her fingers smelled like paper and her eyes teared at the sight of paper and sometimes her head pounded.