Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  The wave of impulsive anger swept over her, and she allowed his body to block her path to the merchant, to the two of them, to all six of them, for these men were all the same to her.

  “You’re the only man in seven kingdoms who can keep that wildcat on a leash,” said one of the two men. She wasn’t sure which one, for she was distracted by the effect the words had on Po’s face.

  “It’s fortunate for us she has such a sensible keeper,” the man continued. “And you’re a lucky fellow yourself. The wild ones are the most fun, if you can control them.”

  Po looked at her, but he didn’t see her. His eyes snapped, silver ice and gold fire. The arm that blocked her stiffened, and his hand tightened into a fist. He inhaled, endlessly it seemed. He was furious; she saw this, and she thought he was going to strike the man who had spoken; and for a panicky moment she didn’t know whether to stop him or help him.

  Stop him. She would stop him, for he wasn’t thinking. She took his forearms, and gripped them tightly. She thought his name into his head. Po. Stop. Think, she thought into his mind, just as he had said to her. Think. He began to breathe out, as slowly as he’d breathed in. His eyes refocused and he saw her.

  He turned around and stood beside her. He faced the two men; it didn’t even matter which of them had spoken.

  “Get out.” His voice was very quiet.

  “We would have our payment—”

  Po took a step toward the men, and they stepped back. He held his arms at his sides with a casual calmness that didn’t fool anyone in the room. “Have you the slightest notion to whom you’re speaking?” he asked. “Do you imagine you’ll receive a coin of my money, when you’ve spoken this way? You’re lucky I let you go without knocking your teeth from your mouths.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t?” Katsa said, looking into the eyes of each man, one after the other. “I’d like to do something to discourage them from touching the innkeeper’s daughter.”

  “We won’t,” one of them gasped. “We won’t touch anyone, I swear it.”

  “You’ll be sorry if you do,” she said. “Sorry for the rest of your short, wretched lives.”

  “We won’t, My Lady. We won’t.” They backed to the door, their faces white, their smirks vanished now. “It was only a joke, My Lady, I swear it.”

  “Get out,” Po said. “Your payment is that we won’t kill you for your insults.”

  The men scrambled from the room. Po slammed the door behind them. Then he leaned his back against the door and slid down until he sat on the floor. He rubbed his face with his hands and heaved a deep sigh.

  Katsa took a candle from the table and came to crouch before him. She tried to measure his tiredness and his anger, in the bend of his head and the hardness of his shoulders. He dropped his hands from his face and rested his head against the door. He watched her face for a moment.

  “I truly thought I might hurt that man,” he said, “very badly.”

  “I didn’t know you were capable of such temper.”

  “Apparently I am.”

  “Po,” Katsa said, as a thought occurred to her. “How did you know I intended to attack them? My intentions were toward them, not you.”

  “Yes, but my sense of your energy heightened suddenly, and I know you well enough to guess when you’re likely to take a swing at someone.” He half-smiled, tiredly. “No one could ever accuse you of being inconsistent.”

  She snorted. She sat on the floor before him and crossed her legs. “And now will you tell me what you learned from them?”

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes. “What I learned. To start with, other than that fellow in the corner, they barely spoke a true word. It was a game. They wanted to trick us into paying them for false information. To get back at us, for the incident in the eating room.”

  “They’re small-minded,” Katsa said.

  “Very small-minded, but they’ve helped us, nonetheless. It’s Leck, Katsa, I’m sure of it. The man lied when he said Leck was not responsible. And yet—and yet there was something else very strange that I could make no sense of.” He shook his head and stared into his hands, thinking. “It’s so odd, Katsa. I felt this strange … defensiveness rise in them.”

  “What do you mean, defensiveness?”

  “As if they all truly believed Leck’s innocence and wished to defend him to me.”

  “But you just said Leck is guilty.”

  “He is guilty, and these men know it. But they also believe him innocent.”

  “That makes utterly no sense.”

  He shook his head again. “I know. But I’m sure of what I sensed. I tell you, Katsa, when the man said that Leck was not responsible for the kidnapping, he was lying. But when he said, a moment later, ‘Leck is blameless,’ he meant it. He believed himself to be telling the truth.” Po gazed up at the dark ceiling. “Are we supposed to conclude that Leck kidnapped my grandfather, but for some innocent reason? It simply cannot be.”

  Katsa couldn’t comprehend the things Po had learned, any more than she could comprehend the manner in which he’d learned them. “None of this makes sense,” she said, weakly.

  He came down out of his thoughts for a moment and focused on her. “Katsa. I’m sorry. This must be overwhelming to you. I’m capable of sensing quite a lot, you see, from people who want to fool me but don’t know to guard their thoughts and feelings.”

  She couldn’t understand it. She gave up trying to make sense of the king who was both guilty and innocent. She watched Po as he became distracted by his thoughts again and stared again into his hands. The merchants hadn’t known to guard their thoughts and feelings. If it was a thing that could be done, then she, at least, wanted to learn how to do it.

  She felt his eyes and realized he was watching her. “You do keep some things from me,” he said.

  She started, then focused on blankness for a moment.

  “Or you have,” he continued, “since you’ve learned of my Grace. I mean, I’ve felt you keeping things from me—you’re doing it now—and I can tell you it works, because my Grace shows me nothing. I’m always a bit relieved when it works, Katsa. Truly, I don’t wish to take your secrets from you.” He sat up straight, his face lit with an idea. “You know, you could always knock me unconscious. I wouldn’t stop you.”

  Katsa laughed then. “I wouldn’t. I’ve promised you I won’t hit you, except in our practices.”

  “But it’s self-defense, in this case.”

  “It is not.”

  “It is,” he insisted, and she laughed again at his earnestness.

  “I’d rather strengthen my mind against you,” she said, “than knock you out every time I have a thought I don’t want you to know.”

  “Yes, well, and I’d prefer that also, believe me. But I grant you permission to knock me out, if ever you need to.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. You know how impulsive I am.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “If you grant me permission, I’ll probably do it, Po. I’ll probably—”

  He held up his hand. “It’s an equalizer. When we fight, you hold your Grace back. I can’t hold my Grace back. So you must have the right to defend yourself.”

  She didn’t like it. But she could not miss his point. And she could not miss his willingness, his dear willingness, to give over his Grace for her. “You will always have a headache,” she warned.

  “Perhaps Raffin included his salve for headaches among the medicines. I should like to change my hair, now that you’ve changed yours. Blue would suit me, don’t you think?”

  She was laughing again, and she swore to herself that she wouldn’t hit him; she wouldn’t, unless she were entirely desperate. And then the candle on the floor beside them dimmed and died. Their conversation had gotten entirely off track. They were leaving for Monsea early in the morning, most likely, and it was the middle of the night and everyone in the inn and the town slept. Yet here they were, sitting on the floor, laughing in the dark.

&nbs
p; “We leave for Monsea tomorrow, then?” she said. “We’ll fall asleep on our horses.”

  “I’ll fall asleep on my horse. You’ll ride as if you’ve slept for days—as if it’s a race between us to see who reaches Monsea first.”

  “And what will we find when we get there? A king who’s innocent of the things of which he’s guilty?”

  He rubbed his head. “I’ve always thought it strange that my mother and father have no suspicions about Leck, even knowing his story. And now these men seem to think him blameless in the kidnapping, even knowing he’s not.”

  “Can he be so kind in the rest of his life that everyone forgives his crimes, or fails to see them?”

  He sat for a moment, quietly. “I’ve wondered … it occurs to me recently … that he could be Graced. That he could have a Grace that changes the way people think of him. Are there such Graces? I don’t even know.”

  It had never occurred to her. But he could be Graced. With one eye missing, he could be Graced and no one would ever know. No one would even suspect, for who could suspect a Grace that controlled suspicions?

  “He could have the Grace of fooling people,” Po said. “The Grace of confusing people with lies, lies that spread from kingdom to kingdom. Imagine it, Katsa—people carrying his lies in their own mouths, and spreading them to believing ears; absurd lies, erasing logic and truth, all the way to Lienid. Can you imagine the power of a person who had such a Grace? He could create whatever reputation for himself he wished. He could take whatever he wanted and no one would ever hold him responsible.”

  Katsa thought of the boy who was named heir, and the king and queen who died shortly thereafter. The advisers who supposedly jumped into the river together. And a whole kingdom of mourners who never thought to question the boy who had no family, no past, no Monsean blood flowing through his veins—but who had become king. “But his kindness,” Katsa said urgently. “The animals. That man spoke of the animals he restores to health.”

  “And that’s the other thing,” Po said. “That man truly believed in Leck’s philanthropy. But am I the only person who finds it a bit odd that there should be so many slashed-up dogs and squirrels in Monsea that need rescuing? Are the trees and the rocks made of broken glass?”

  “But he’s a kind man if he cares for them.”

  Po peered at Katsa strangely. “You’re defending him, too, in the face of logic that tells you not to, just like my parents and just like those merchants. He’s got hundreds of animals with bizarre cuts that don’t heal, Katsa, and children in his employ dying of mysterious illnesses, and you’re not the slightest bit suspicious.”

  He was right. Katsa saw it; and the truth in all its gruesomeness trickled into her mind. She began to have a conception of a power that spread like a bad feeling, like a sickness itself, seizing all minds that it touched.

  Could there be a Grace more dangerous than one that replaced sight with a fog of falseness?

  Katsa shuddered. For she would be in the presence of this king soon enough. She wasn’t certain what defense even she could raise against a man who could fool her into believing his innocent reputation.

  Her eyes traced Po’s silhouette, dark against the black door. His white shirt was the only part of him truly visible, a luminous gray in the darkness. She wished, suddenly, that she could see him better. He stood and pulled her to her feet. He pulled her to the window and looked down into her face. The moonlight caught a glimmer in his silver eye, and a gleam in the gold of his ear. She didn’t know why she had felt so anxious or why the lines of his nose and his mouth, or the concern in his eyes, should comfort her.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s bothering you?”

  “If Leck has this Grace, as you suspect…” she began.

  “Yes?”

  “…how will I protect myself from him?”

  He considered her seriously. “Well. And that’s easy,” he said. “My Grace will protect me from him. And I’ll protect you. You’ll be safe with me, Katsa.”

  IN HER BED, thoughts swirled like a windstorm in her mind; but she ordered herself to sleep. In an instant, the storm quieted. She slept under a blanket of calm.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THERE WERE two ways to get to Leck City from the inn or from any point in Sunder. One was to travel south to one of the Sunderan ports and sail southeast to Monport, the westernmost port city of the Monsean peninsula, where a road led north to Leck City, across flat land just east of Monsea’s highest peaks. This route was traveled by merchants who carried goods, and most parties containing women, children, or the elderly.

  The other way was shorter but more difficult. It led southeast through a Sunderan forest that grew thicker and wilder and rose to meet the mountains that formed Monsea’s border with Sunder and Estill. The path became too rocky and uneven for horses. Those who crossed the mountain pass did so on foot. An inn on either side of the pass bought or kept the horses of those who approached the mountains and sold or returned them to those who came from the mountains. This was the route Katsa and Po would take.

  Leck City was the walk of a day or so beyond the mountain pass, less if they purchased new horses. The walk to the city wound through valleys grown lush with the water that flowed down from the mountaintops. It was a landscape of rivers and streams, similar to that of inland Lienid, Po told Katsa—or so the Monsean queen had written—which made it a landscape unlike anything Katsa had ever seen.

  As they rode, Katsa couldn’t content herself with imagining the strange landscapes ahead. For when she’d awakened to morning in the Sunderan inn, the windstorm of the night before had returned to her mind.

  Po’s Grace would protect Po from Leck. And Po would protect her.

  With Po, Katsa would be safe.

  He’d said it simply, as if it were nothing. But it wasn’t nothing for Katsa to rely on someone else’s protection. She’d never done such a thing in her life.

  And besides, wouldn’t it be easier for her to kill Leck immediately, before he said a word or raised a finger? Or gag him, immobilize him, find some way to disempower him completely? Maintain control and ensure her own defense? Katsa didn’t need protection. There would be a solution; there would be a way for her to protect herself from Leck, if indeed he had the power they suspected. She only needed to think of it.

  LATE IN THE morning the skies began to drip. By afternoon the drizzle had turned to rain, a cold, relentless rain that beat down and hid the forest road from their sight. Finally they stopped, soaked to the skin, to see what they could do about shelter before night fell. The tangle of trees on either side of the road provided some cover. They tethered the horses under an enormous pine that smelled of the sap dripping from its branches with the rainwater. “It’s as dry a place as we’re likely to find,” Po said. “A fire will be impossible, but at least we won’t sleep in the rain.”

  “A fire is never impossible,” Katsa said. “I’ll build it, and you find us something to cook on it.”

  So Po set out into the trees with his bow, somewhat skeptically, and Katsa set to work building a fire. It wasn’t easy, with the world around her soaked right through. But the pine tree had protected some of the needles nestled closely to its trunk, and she uncovered some leaves and a stick or two that were not quite waterlogged. With the strike of her knife, a number of gentle breaths, and whatever protection her own open arms could give, a flame began to lick its way through the damp little tower of kindling. It warmed her face as she leaned into it. It pleased her. She’d always had a way with fires. With Oll and Giddon the fire had always been her responsibility.

  Further evidence, of course, that she didn’t need to rely on anyone for her survival.

  She left the flicker of light, and scrambled to find it more food. When Po came back, dripping, to their camp, she was grateful for the fat rabbit in his hand.

  “My Grace is definitely still growing,” he said, wiping water from his face. “Since we entered this forest I’ve noticed a grea
ter sensitivity to animals. This rabbit was hiding in the hollow of a tree, and it seems to me I shouldn’t have known he was there—” He stopped at the sight of her small, smoky fire. He watched as she breathed into it and fed it with her collection of twigs and branches. “Katsa, how did you manage it? You’re a wonder.”

  She laughed at that. He crouched beside her. “It’s good to hear you laugh,” he said. “You’ve been so quiet today. You know, I’m quite cold, though I didn’t realize it until I felt the heat of these flames.”

  Po warmed himself, saw to their dinner, and chatted. Katsa began to open their bags and hang blankets and clothing from the lowest branches of the pine, to dry them as best they could. When the meat of the rabbit was propped sizzling above the flames, Po joined her. He unrolled their maps and held a soggy corner near the fire. He opened Raffin’s packet of medicines and inspected them, setting the labeled envelopes onto rocks to dry.

  It was comfortable, their camp, with the drops plopping down from above and the warmth of the fire, and the smell of burning wood and cooking meat. Po’s patter of conversation was comfortable. Katsa kept the fire alive and smiled at his talk. She fell asleep that night, in a blanket partly dried, secure in the certainty that she could survive anywhere, on her own.

  SHE WOKE in the middle of the night in a panic, certain that Po had gone and that she was alone. But it must have been the tail end of a dream, snagging into her consciousness as it departed, for she could hear his breath through the even fall of rain. When she turned over and sat up, she could make out his form on the ground beside her. She reached out and touched his shoulder. Just to make sure. He had not left her; he was here, and they were traveling together through the Sunderan forest, to the Monsean border. She lay down again, and watched the outline of his sleeping body in the darkness.

  She would accept his protection after all, if truly she needed it. She was not too proud to be helped by this friend. He’d helped her in a thousand ways already.