Bitterblue began to cry, because she understood, now that it was happening, how her friends would grieve. Was anything more horrible than losing someone, and not even understanding why? Hava would be inconsolable. Hava would run away; would she ever come back? “Giddon,” she cried. She’d been worried, for a long time, that the Council would take him away from her soon, assign him to some other court. She didn’t want him to leave. Now she was the one leaving him. “But I don’t want to go!” she cried.

Suddenly she was in the air, hanging above the water, leaving the watching silbercows behind. She looked into the eyes of the long-whiskered one who’d tried to keep her awake. The creature gazed back at her with perfect calm. Then everything went black.

Chapter Six

Something strange was afoot today. Lovisa Cavenda had a sense for these things, like a snake perched upright with its tongue touching the air.

At dinner, in the dining room of her dormitory, one of her friends overturned a cup of tea. When no one came from the kitchens to clean it up, Lovisa stood. “I’ll get someone,” she said, crossing to the kitchen doors and entering quietly.

Two women stood at a counter. “They didn’t even miss her until they sighted land,” one of the women said. “Someone went below to wake everyone, and she was gone. Then they were a long time searching the ship, because, of course, they assumed she was on board somewhere.”

The other woman, more of a girl, really, made a small, distressed noise. “But she wasn’t?”

“No, the poor dear! A few of them actually jumped into the sea, looking for her. My sister was in the harbor when the ship docked. She said they were all in hysterics.”

“That’s the saddest thing,” said the girl. “How old was she?”

“Young! Twenty-three, twenty-four?”

Throwing her braid over her shoulder, the girl noticed Lovisa standing by the door. “Oh,” she said, flustered. “I’m sorry, miss. Can we help you?”

She was plain-faced like Lovisa, but her discomposure made her sweet, pleasing, and, Lovisa suspected, eager to please. She looked genuinely distressed about the story she’d heard.

Lovisa was worried too, though she hadn’t decided yet what it meant. The Queen of Monsea was twenty-three. But so were a lot of people.

“We have a spill,” she said. “Could someone clean it up?”

With distracted murmurs, the girl bustled off in search of a cloth. Lovisa returned to her table, where none of her peers seemed aware of any sailing accidents that had befallen any queens.

—