Giddon is gone from the Monsean court for most of the spring. Bitterblue finds herself half-crazy, freed by his absence from her own experiment. Her experiment of only telling the truth to him. This has kept her in check, she realizes.
Normal politics has nothing on the mess Leck left behind of the Monsean court.
Although he insists he is no longer a lord, Bitterblue sees his responsibility for the people that will always be his in the lines of his face and the calluses on his hands. A new lord lives on his burned-out land, is building a new manor in the place of Giddon's castle, and Giddon visits to make sure his beloved villagers are rebuilding and getting along well enough as they begin again.
When he returns, stinking of horses and sweat and road dirt, he is heavy and sad but more at peace than he was when he left.
It is humid and brutally hot, and Bitterblue has escaped her stuffy tower for relief and found none (she tried opening the windows, but the wind coming in and the perception of emptiness makes her sick and dizzy). Giddon finds her on the edge of the fountain in her great courtyard, fanning herself slowly and futilely and trying to soak up some of the cool from the stone.
"Lady Queen," he greets her. He sits beside her, and seems to be barely bothered by the heat. The Middluns are warmer than her mountains, she reckons. "How are you?"
With this simple question, all thoughts of long skirts and long sleeves and the sweat beading on her brow vanish, for Giddon is the person she tells the truth to, and the weather is truthfully the least of her problems.
"Overwhelmed," she responds slowly. "Clerks in my tower have breakdowns at least twice a week. I found another of Thiel and Runnemood's men in my new ministry, and I got word from the Dells that Saf so provoked some faction so much they tried to kill him. I have a headache all the time, never seem to get enough sleep, have doubts about the replacements in my government, and miss my friends."
By the end of this, blood has risen in Bitterblue's cheeks. Giddon's eyebrows are in his hairline. "I…see."
"At least you're here now," Bitterblue smiles. "And Teddy and Bren and Tilda and Hava have been great helps."
"I'm glad to hear that, Lady Queen."
He doesn't seem frightened or bothered by these truths. In fact, Giddon begins to question her in his gentle, methodical way, and within minutes they are on their way back to her tower, refreshed and ready to tackle her assistant minister of education.
Sometimes the truth needs to be withheld, but not often, Bitterblue decides. No matter how painful, the truth is necessary for healing.
Even for her.
Perhaps revealing a little more truth of herself would help solve her problems. Giddon was full of sympathy and advice. There is a difference, when speaking with friends, between telling a truth and exposing a weakness.
As she strokes Froggatt's hair as he sobs in the lower offices, Bitterblue makes herself a resolution.
She will tell at least one truth more a day than politics would advise. Not just to friends and those that she loves and she trusts, but to her advisers and her judges and people working in her castles and the criminals in her jails.
She will be the antithesis to the liar king that came before her, even in her personal, emotional tangle of a life.
When Helda asks her that evening how her day has been, Bitterblue breathes through an empty comment about how she despises sweating in silk and remarks, "Difficult. Heartbreaking. But I won't have it any other way."