Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  “Do you sense the presence of animals and plants? Rocks and dirt?”

  “I’m leaving,” he said, “tomorrow.”

  “Do you know when an animal is near?”

  “Will you turn around,” he said, “so I can see you while we speak?”

  “Can you read my mind more easily when I’m facing you?”

  “No. I’d just like to see you, Katsa. That’s all.”

  His voice was soft, and sorry. He was sorry about all of this, sorry for his Grace. His Grace that was not his fault and that would have driven her away had he told her of it at the beginning.

  She turned to face him.

  “I didn’t used to sense animals and plants or landscapes,” he said, “but lately that’s been changing. Sometimes I’ll get a fuzzy sense of something that isn’t human. If something moves, I might sense it. It’s erratic.”

  Katsa watched his face.

  “I’m going to Sunder,” he said.

  Katsa folded her arms across her stomach and said nothing.

  “When Murgon questioned me after your rescue, it became obvious to me the object you’d taken was my grandfather. It became just as obvious Murgon had been keeping him for someone else. But I couldn’t tell who, not without asking questions that would’ve given away what I knew.”

  She listened vaguely. She was tired, overwhelmed by too many things in the present to focus on the details of the kidnapping.

  “I’m beginning to think it’s something to do with Monsea,” he said. “We’ve ruled out the Middluns, Wester, Nander, Estill, Sunder—and you’ll remember, I’ve been to most of those courts. I know I was not lied to, except in Sunder. Lienid is not responsible, I’m sure of it.”

  She’d lost her fury, somewhere, as they’d talked. She didn’t feel it anymore. She wished she did, because she preferred it to the emptiness that had settled in its place. She was sorry for everything that had changed now with Po. Sorry to see it all go.

  “Katsa,” he said. “I need you to listen to me.”

  She blinked and worked her mind back to the words he had spoken.

  “But King Leck of Monsea is a kind man,” she said. “He would have no reason.”

  “He might,” he said, “though I don’t know what it is. Something isn’t right, Katsa. Some impressions I got from Murgon that I dismissed at the time, perhaps I dismissed them in error. And my father’s sister, Queen Ashen, she wouldn’t behave as you told me. She’s so stoical, she is strong. She wouldn’t have hysterics and lock herself and her child away from her husband. I swear to you, if you knew her…”

  He stopped, his brow furrowed. He kicked the floor. “I’ve a feeling Monsea has something to do with it. I don’t know if it’s my Grace, or just instinct. Anyway, I’m going back to Sunder, to see what I can learn of it. Grandfather’s doing better, but for his own sake I want him to stay hidden until I get to the bottom of this.”

  That was it, then. He was going to Sunder, to get to the bottom of it. And it was good that he was going, for she didn’t want him in her head.

  But neither did she want him to go. And he must know that, since she had thought it. And now, did he know that she knew that he knew, since she had thought that, too?

  This was absurd, it was impossible. Being with him was impossible.

  But still she didn’t want him to go.

  “I hoped you would come with me,” he said, and she stared at him, openmouthed. “We’d make a good team. I don’t even know where I’m going, for sure. But I hoped you would consider coming. If you’re still my friend.”

  She couldn’t think what to say. “Doesn’t your Grace tell you if I’m your friend?”

  “Do you know, yourself?”

  She tried to think, but there was nothing in her mind. She knew only that she was numb and sad and completely without any clarity of feeling.

  “I can’t know your feelings,” he said, “if you don’t know them yourself.”

  He looked to the door suddenly; and then there was a knock, and a steward burst in without waiting for Katsa’s response. At the sight of his pale, tight face, it all came flooding back to her. Randa. Randa wanted to see her, most likely wanted to kill her. Before this confusion with Po, she had disobeyed Randa.

  “The king orders you to come before him at once, My Lady,” the steward said. “Forgive me, My Lady. He says that if you don’t, he’ll send his entire guard to fetch you.”

  “Very well,” Katsa said. “Tell him I’ll go to him immediately.”

  “Thank you, My Lady.” The steward turned and scampered away.

  Katsa scowled after him. “His entire guard. What does he think they could do to me? I should’ve told the steward to send them, just for the amusement of it.” She looked around the room. “I wonder if I should take a knife.”

  Po watched her with narrowed eyes. “What have you done? What’s this about?”

  “I’ve disobeyed him. He sent me to torture some poor, innocent lord, and I decided I wouldn’t. Do you think I should take a knife?” She walked across to her weapons room.

  He followed her. “To do what? What do you think will happen at this meeting?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh, Po, if he angers me, I fear I’ll want to kill him. And what if he threatens me and gives me no choice?” She threw herself into a chair and dropped her head down on the Council table. How could she go to Randa now, of all times, when there was a whirlwind in her head? She would lose herself at the sound of his voice. She would do something dreadful.

  Po slid into the chair next to her and sat sideways, facing her. “Katsa,” he said. “Listen to me. You’re the most powerful person I’ve ever met. You can do whatever you want, whatever you want in the world. No one can make you do anything, and your uncle can’t touch you. The instant you walk into his presence, you have all the power. If you wish not to hurt him, Katsa, then you have only to choose not to.”

  “But what will I do?”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Po said. “You only have to go in knowing what you won’t do. You won’t hurt him, you won’t let him hurt you. You’ll figure the rest out as you go along.”

  She sighed into the table. She didn’t think much of his plan.

  “It’s the only possible plan, Katsa. You have the power to do whatever you want.”

  She sat up and turned to him. “You keep saying that, but it’s not true,” she said. “I don’t have the power to stop you from sensing my thoughts.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You could kill me.”

  “I couldn’t,” she said, “for you would know I meant to kill you, and you’d escape me. You’d stay far away from me, always.”

  “Ah, but I wouldn’t.”

  “You would,” she said, “if I wished to kill you.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  On that senseless note she threw her arms into the air. “Enough. Enough of this.” She stood up from the table, and marched out of her apartments to answer the king’s call.

  Chapter Fifteen

  HER FIRST THOUGHT when she entered the throne room was to wish she’d brought a knife after all. Her second thought was to wish that Po’s sense of bodies had extended to this room, so that he might have warned her of what was waiting for her here, and she might have known not to come.

  A long, blue carpet led from the doors to Randa’s throne. The throne was raised high on a platform of white marble. Randa sat high on his throne, blue robes and bright blue eyes. His face hard, his smile frozen. An archer to either side of him, an arrow notched in each bow and trained, as she entered the room, on her forehead, on the place just above her blue and green eyes. Two more archers, one in each far corner, also with arrows notched.

  The king’s guard lined the carpet on either side, three men deep, swords drawn and held at their sides. Randa usually kept a tenth this many guards in his throne room. Impressive; it was an impressive battalion Randa had arranged in preparation for her appearance. But as Katsa took stock of
the room, it occurred to her that Birn or Drowden or Thigpen would have done better. It was good he was an unwarring king, for Randa was not so clever when it came to assembling battalions. This one, he’d assembled all wrong. Too few archers, and too many of these clumsy, armored, lumbering men who would trip all over each other if they tried to attack her. Tall, broad men who could shield her easily from an arrow’s flight. And armed, all of them armed with swords, and each with a dagger in his opposite belt, swords and daggers she might as well be carrying on her own person, so easily could she snatch them from their owners. And the king himself raised high on a platform, a long blue carpet leading straight to him like a pathway to direct the flight of her blade.

  If a fight erupted in this room, it would be a massacre.

  Katsa stepped forward, her eyes and ears finely tuned to the archers. Randa’s archers were good, but they were not Graced. Katsa spared a moment to drily pity the guards at her back, if this encounter came down to arrow dodging.

  And then, when she’d progressed about halfway to the throne, her uncle called out. “Stop there. I’ve no wish for your closer company, Katsa.” Her name sounded like steam hissing down the carpet when Randa spoke it. “You return to court today with no woman. No dowry. My underlord and my captain injured by your hand. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  When a battalion of soldiers didn’t trouble her, why should one voice rile her so? She forced herself to hold his contemptuous eyes. “I didn’t agree with your order, Lord King.”

  “Can I possibly have heard you correctly? You didn’t agree with my order?”

  “No, Lord King.”

  Randa sat back, his smile twisted tighter now. “Charming,” he said. “Charming, truly. Tell me, Katsa. What, precisely, possessed you with the notion that you are in a position to consider the king’s orders? To think about them? To form opinions regarding them? Have I ever asked you to share your thoughts on anything?”

  “No, Lord King.”

  “Have I ever encouraged you to bestow upon us your sage advice?”

  “No, Lord King.”

  “Do you imagine it is your wit, your stunning intellect, that warrants your position in this court?”

  And here was where Randa was clever. This was how he’d kept her a caged animal for so long. He knew the words to make her feel stupid and brutish and turn her into a dog.

  Well, and if she must be a dog, at least she would no longer be in this man’s cage. She would be her own, she would possess her own viciousness, and she would do what she liked with it. Even now, she felt her arms and legs beginning to thrill with readiness. She narrowed her eyes at the king. She could not keep the challenge out of her voice.

  “And what exactly is the purpose of all these men, Uncle?”

  Randa smiled blandly. “These men will attack if you make the slightest move. And at the end of this interview they’ll accompany you to my dungeons.”

  “And do you imagine I’ll go willingly to your dungeons?”

  “I don’t care if you go willingly or not.”

  “That’s because you think these men could force me to go against my will.”

  “Katsa. Of course we all have the highest regard for your skill. But even you have no chance against two hundred guards and my best archers. The end of this conversation will see you either in my dungeons, or dead.”

  Katsa saw and heard everything in the room. The king and his archers; the arrows notched and aimed; the guards ready with their swords; her arms in red sleeves, her feet beneath red skirts. The room was still, completely still, excepting the breath of the men around her, and the tingling she felt inside her. She held her hands at her sides, away from her body, so that everyone could see them. She breathed around a thing that she recognized now as hatred. She hated this king. Her body was alive with it.

  “Uncle,” she said. “Let me explain what will happen the instant one of your men makes a move toward me. Let’s say, for instance, one of your archers lets an arrow fly. You’ve not come to many of my practices, Uncle. You haven’t seen me dodge arrows; but your archers have. If one of your archers releases an arrow, I’ll drop to the floor. The arrow will doubtless hit one of your guards. The sword and the dagger of that guard will be in my hands before anyone in the room has time to realize what’s happened. A fight will break out with the guards; but only seven or eight of them can surround me at once, Uncle, and seven or eight are nothing to me. As I kill the guards I’ll take their daggers and begin throwing them into the hearts of your archers, who of course will have no sighting on me once the brawl with the guards has broken out. I’ll get out of the room alive, Uncle; but most of the rest of you will be dead. Of course, this is only what will happen if I wait for one of your men to make a move. I could move first. I could attack a guard, steal his dagger, and hurl it into your chest this instant.”

  Randa’s mouth was fixed into a sneer, but under this he had begun to tremble. A threat of death, given and received; and Katsa felt it ringing in her fingertips. And she saw that she could do it now, she could kill him right now. The disdain in his eyes would disappear, and his sneer would slide away. Her fingers itched, for she could do it now with the snatch of a dagger.

  And then what? a small voice inside herself whispered; and Katsa caught her breath, stricken. And then what? A bloodbath, one she’d be lucky to escape. Raffin would become king, and his first inheritance would be the task of killing the murderer of his father. A charge he couldn’t avoid if he meant to rule justly as the King of the Middluns; and a charge that would break his heart, and make her an enemy, and a stranger.

  And Po would hear of it as he was leaving. He’d hear that she’d lost control and killed her uncle, that she’d caused her own exile and broken Raffin’s spirit. He would return to Lienid and watch from his balcony as the sun dropped behind the sea; and he’d shake his head in the orange light and wonder why she’d allowed this to happen, when she held so much power in her hands.

  Where is your faith in your power? the voice whispered now. You don’t have to shed blood. And Katsa saw what she was doing, here in this throne room. She saw Randa, pale, gripping the arms of his throne so hard it seemed he might break them. In a moment he would motion to his archers to strike, out of fear, out of the terror of waiting for her to make the first move.

  Tears came to her eyes. Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder, and Randa didn’t deserve it. And even though she wanted what the voice wanted, she didn’t think she had the courage for it.

  Po thinks you have the courage, the voice said fiercely. Pretend that you believe he’s right. Believe him, for just a moment.

  Pretend. Her fingers were screaming, but maybe she could pretend long enough to get out of this room.

  Katsa raised burning eyes to the king. Her voice shook. “I’m leaving the court,” she said. “Don’t try to stop me. I promise you’ll regret it if you do. Forget about me once I’m gone, for I won’t consent to live like a tracked animal. I’m no longer yours to command.”

  His eyes were wide, and his mouth open. She turned and rushed down the long carpet, her ears tuned to the silence, readying her to spin around at the first hint of a bowstring or a sword. As she passed through her uncle’s great doors she felt the weight of hundreds of astonished eyes on her back; and none of them knew she had been only a breath, a twitch, away from changing her mind.

  PART TWO

  The Twisted King

  Chapter Sixteen

  THEY LEFT well before daylight. Raffin and Bann saw them off, the two medicine makers bleary-eyed, Bann yawning endlessly. The morning was cold, and Katsa was wide awake, and quiet. For she was shy of her riding partner; and she felt strange about Raffin, so strange that she wished he wasn’t there. If Raffin hadn’t been there watching her go, then perhaps she’d have been able to pretend she wasn’t leaving him. With Raffin there, there was no pretense, and she was unable to do anything about the strange painful water that rose into her eyes an
d throat, every time she looked at him.

  They were impossible, these two men, for if one did not make her cry, the other did. What Helda would make of it she could only imagine; and she hadn’t liked saying good-bye to Helda either, or Oll. No, there was little to be happy of this morning, except that she was not, at least, leaving Po; and he was probably standing there beside his horse registering her every feeling on the matter. She gave him a withering look for good measure, and he raised his eyebrows and smiled and yawned. Well. And he’d better not ride as if he were half asleep, or she’d leave him in the dust. She was not in the mood to dawdle.

  Raffin fussed back and forth between their horses, checking saddles, testing the holds of their stirrups. “I suppose I needn’t worry about your safety,” he said, “with the two of you riding together.”

  “We’ll be safe.” Katsa yanked at a strap that held a bag to her saddle. She tossed a bag over her horse’s back to Po.

  “You have the list of Council contacts in Sunder?” Raffin asked. “And the maps? You have food for the day? You have money?”

  Katsa smiled up at him then, for he sounded as she imagined a mother would sound if her child were leaving forever. “Po’s a prince of Lienid,” she said. “Why do you think he rides such a big horse, if not to carry his bags of gold?”

  Raffin’s eyes laughed down at her. “Take this.” He closed her hands over a small satchel. “It’s a bag of medicines, in case you should need them. I’ve marked them so you’ll know what each is for.”

  Po came forward then and held his hand out to Bann. “Thank you for all you’ve done.” He took Raffin’s hand. “You’ll take care of my grandfather in my absence?”

  “He’ll be safe with us,” Raffin said.

  Po swung onto the back of his horse, and Katsa took Bann’s hands and squeezed them. And then she stood before Raffin and looked up into his face.