Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  She hit hard and fast, with hand, elbow, knee, foot. He hit hard, too, but it was as if every blow focused some energy inside her. Every tree they slammed into, every root they tripped over, centered her. She fell into the comfort of fighting with Po, and the fight was ferocious.

  When she wrestled him to the ground and he pushed her face away, she called out. “Wait. Blood. I taste blood.”

  He stopped struggling. “Where? Not your mouth?”

  “I think it’s your hand,” she said.

  He sat up and she crouched beside him. She took his hand and squinted into his palm. “Is it bleeding? Can you tell?”

  “It’s nothing. It was the edge of your boot.”

  “We shouldn’t be fighting in boots.”

  “We can’t fight barefoot in the forest, Katsa. Truly, it’s nothing.”

  “Nonetheless—”

  “There’s blood on your mouth,” he said, in a funny, distracted sort of voice that made plain how little he cared about his injured hand. He raised a finger and almost touched her lip; and then dropped his finger, as if he realized suddenly that he was doing something he shouldn’t. He cleared his throat and looked away from her.

  And she felt it then, how near he was. She felt his hand and his wrist, warm under her fingers. He was here, right here, breathing before her; she was touching him; and she felt the risk, as if it were water splashing cold on her skin. She knew that this was the moment to choose. She knew her choice.

  He turned his eyes back to her, and in them she saw that he understood. She climbed into his arms. They clung to each other, and she was crying, as much from relief to be holding him as from the fear of what she did. He rocked her in his lap and hugged her, and whispered her name over and over, until finally her tears stopped.

  She wiped her face on his shirt. She wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt warm in his arms, and calm, and safe and brave. And then she was laughing, laughing at how nice it felt, how good his body felt against hers. He grinned at her, a wicked, gleaming grin that made her warm everywhere. And then his lips touched her throat and nuzzled her neck. She gasped. His mouth found hers. She turned to fire.

  Some time later, as she lay with him in the moss, clinging to him, hypnotized by something his lips did to her throat, she remembered his bleeding hand. “Later,” he growled, and then she remembered the blood on her mouth, but that only brought his mouth to hers again, tasting, seeking, and his hands fumbling at her clothing, and her hands fumbling at his. And the warmth of his skin, as their bodies explored each other. And after all, they knew each other’s bodies as well as any lovers; but this touch was so different, straining toward instead of against.

  “Po,” she said once, when one clear thought pierced her mind.

  “It’s in the medicines,” he whispered. “There is seabane in the medicines,” and his hands, and his mouth, and his body returned her to mindlessness. He made her drunk, this man made her drunk; and every time his eyes flashed into hers she could not breathe.

  She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.

  THEY LAY afterward, warmed by each other and by the heat of the fire. She touched his nose and his mouth. She played with the hoops in his ears. He held her and kissed her, and his eyes flickered into hers.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She laughed. “I have not lost myself. And you?”

  He smiled. “I’m very happy.”

  She traced the line of his jaw to his ear and down to his shoulder. She touched the markings that ringed his arms. “And Raffin thought we’d end this way, too,” she said. “Apparently, I’m the only one who didn’t see it coming.”

  “Raffin will make a very good king,” Po said, and she laughed again, and rested her head in the crook of his arm.

  “Let’s pick up the pace tomorrow,” she said, thinking of men who were not good kings.

  “Yes, all right. Are you in pain still?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you suppose it happens that way? Why does a woman feel that pain?”

  She had no answer to that. Women felt it, that was all she knew. “Let me clean your hand,” she said.

  “I’ll clean you first.”

  She shivered as he left her to go to the fire, and find water and cloths. He leaned into the light, and brightness and shadows moved across his body. He was beautiful. She admired him, and he flashed a grin at her. Almost as beautiful as you are conceited, she thought at him, and he laughed out loud.

  It struck her that this should feel strange, to be lying here, watching him, teasing him. To have done what they’d done, and be what they’d become. But instead it felt natural and comfortable. Inevitable. And only the smallest bit terrifying.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THEY HAD entire conversations in which she didn’t say a word. For Po could sense when Katsa desired to talk to him, and if there was a thing she wanted him to know, his Grace could capture that thing. It seemed a useful ability for them to practice. And Katsa found that the more comfortable she grew with opening her mind to him, the more practiced she became with closing it as well. It was never entirely satisfying, closing her mind, because whenever she closed her feelings from him she must also close them from herself. But it was something.

  They found it was easier for him to pick up her thoughts than it was for her to formulate them. She thought things to him word by word at first, as if she were speaking, but silently. Do you want to stop and rest? Shall I catch us some dinner? I’ve run out of water. “Of course I understand you when you’re that precise,” he said. “But you don’t need to try so hard. I can understand images, too, or feelings, or thoughts in unformed sentences.”

  This was also hard for her at first. She was afraid of being misunderstood, and she formulated her images as carefully as she’d formulated her words. Fish roasting over their fire. A stream. The herbs, the seabane, that she must eat with dinner.

  “If you only open a thought to me, Katsa, I’ll see it—no matter how you think it. If you intend me to know it, I will.”

  But what did it mean to open a thought to him? To intend for him to know it? She tried simply reaching out to his mind whenever she wanted him to know something. Po. And then leaving it to him to collect the essence of the thought.

  It seemed to work. She practiced constantly, both communicating with him and closing him out. Slowly, the tightness of her mind loosened.

  Beside the fire one night, protected from the rain by a shelter of branches she’d built, she asked to see his rings. He placed his hands into hers. She counted. Six plain gold rings, of varying widths, on his right hand. On his left, one plain gold; one thin with an inlaid gray stone running through the middle; one wide and heavy with a sharp, glittery white stone—this the one that must have scratched her that night beside the archery range; and one plain and gold like the first, but engraved all around with a design she recognized, from the markings on his arms. It was this ring that made her wonder if the rings had meaning.

  “Yes,” he said. “Every ring worn by a Lienid means something. This with the engraving is the ring of the king’s seventh son. It’s the ring of my castle and my princehood. My inheritance.”

  Do your brothers have a different ring, and markings on their arms that are different from yours?

  “They do.”

  She fingered the great, heavy ring with the jagged white stone. This is the ring of a king.

  “Yes, this ring is for my father. And this,” he said, fingering the small one with t
he gray line running through the middle, “for my mother. This plain one for my grandfather.”

  Was he never king?

  “His older brother was king. When his brother died, he would’ve been king, had he wished it. But his son, my father, was young and strong and ambitious. My grandfather was old and unwell and content to pass the kingship to his son.”

  And what of your father’s mother, and your mother’s father and mother? Do you wear rings for them?

  “No. They’re dead. I never knew them.”

  She took his right hand. And these? You don’t have enough fingers for the rings on this hand.

  “These are for my brothers,” he said. “One for each. The thickest for the oldest and the thinnest for the youngest.”

  Does this mean that your brothers all wear an even thinner ring, for you?

  “That’s right, and my mother and grandfather, too, and my father.”

  Why should yours be the smallest, just because you’re the youngest?

  “That’s the way it is, Katsa. But the ring they wear for me is different from the others. It has a tiny inlaid gold stone, and a silver.”

  For your eyes.

  “Yes.”

  It’s a special ring, for your Grace? “The Lienid honor the Graced.”

  Well, and that was a novel idea. She hadn’t known that anyone honored the Graced. You don’t wear rings for your brothers’ wives, or their children?

  He smiled. “No, thankfully. But I would wear one for my own wife, and if I had children, I’d wear a ring for each. My mother has four brothers, four sisters, seven sons, two parents, and a husband. She wears nineteen rings.”

  And that is absurd. How can she use her fingers?

  He shrugged. “I’ve no difficulty using mine.” He raised her hands to his mouth then and kissed her knuckles.

  You wouldn’t catch me wearing that many rings.

  He laughed, turned her hands over, and kissed her palms and her wrists. “I wouldn’t catch you doing anything you didn’t want to do.”

  And here was what was rapidly becoming her favorite aspect of Po’s Grace: He knew, without her telling him, the things she did want to do. He dropped to his knees before her now, with a smile that looked like mischief. His hand grazed her side and then pulled her closer. His lips brushed her neck. She caught her breath, forgot whatever retort she’d been about to form, and enjoyed the gold chill of his rings on her face and her body and every place that he touched.

  “YOU BELIEVE Leck cuts those animals up himself,” she said to him one day while they were riding. “Don’t you?”

  He glanced back at her. “I realize it’s a disgusting accusation. But yes, that’s what I believe. And I also wonder about the sickness that man spoke of.”

  “You think he’s killing people off.”

  Po shrugged and didn’t answer.

  Katsa said, “Do you think Queen Ashen closed herself away from him because she figured out that he’s Graced?”

  “I’ve wondered about that, too.”

  “But how could she have figured it out? Shouldn’t she be completely under his spell?”

  “I’ve no idea. Perhaps he went too far with his abuses and she had a moment of mental clarity.” He raised a branch that hung in their path, and ducked under it. “Perhaps his Grace only works to a point.”

  Or perhaps there was no Grace. Perhaps it was no more than a ridiculous notion they’d come up with in a desperate attempt to explain unexplainable circumstances.

  But a king and queen had died, and no one had called foul. A king had kidnapped a grandfather, and no one suspected him.

  A one-eyed king.

  It was a Grace. Or if it was not, it was something unnatural.

  THE PATH grew thinner and more overgrown, and they walked with the horses more than they rode. And now all the trees seemed to change color at once, the leaves orange and yellow and crimson, and purple and brown. Only a day or two to go before they reached the inn that would take their horses. And then the steep climb into the mountains, with their belongings on their backs. There would be snow in the mountains, Po said, and there would not be many travelers. They would need to move cautiously and watch for storms.

  “But you’re not worried, are you, Katsa?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Because you never get cold, and you can bring down a bear with your hands and build us a fire in a blizzard, using icicles for kindling.”

  She would not humor him by laughing, but she couldn’t suppress a smile. They had encamped for the evening. She was fishing, and when she fished he always teased her, for she didn’t fish with a line, as he would have. She fished by removing her boots, rolling up the legs of her trousers, and wading into the water. She’d then snatch up any fish that came within range of her grasp and throw it to Po, who sat on shore laughing at her, scaling and gutting their dinner, and keeping her company.

  “It’s not many people whose hands are faster than a fish,” he said.

  Katsa snatched at a silver pink glimmer that flashed past her ankles, then tossed the fish to Po. “It’s not many people who know that a horse has a stone caught in its hoof even when the horse shows no signs of it, either. I may be able to kill my dinner as easily as I kill men, but at least I’m not conversing with the horses.”

  “I don’t converse with the horses. I’ve only started to know if they want us to stop. And once we’ve stopped, it’s usually easy enough to find what’s wrong.”

  “Well, regardless, it seems to me that you’re not in a position to marvel at the strangeness of my Grace.”

  Po leaned back on his elbows and grinned. “I don’t think your Grace is strange. But I think it’s not what you think it is.”

  She grabbed at a dark flash in the water and threw a fish to him. “What is it, then?”

  “Now, that I don’t know. But a killing Grace can’t account for all the things you can do. The way you never tire. Or suffer from the cold, or from hunger.”

  “I tire.”

  “Other things, too. The knack you have with fire in a rainstorm.”

  “I’m just more patient than other people.”

  Po snorted. “Yes. Patience has always struck me as one of your defining characteristics.”

  He dodged the fish that flew at his head, and sat back again, laughing. “Your eyes are bright as you stand in that water, with the sun setting before you,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

  Stop it. “And you’re a fool.”

  “Come out of there, wildcat. We’ve enough fish.”

  She waded to shore. Meeting her at the edge of the water, he pulled her up onto the moss. Together they gathered up the fish and walked to the fire.

  “I tire,” Katsa said. “And I feel cold and hunger.”

  “All right, if you say so. But just compare yourself to other people.”

  Compare herself to other people.

  She sat down and dried her feet.

  “Shall we fight tonight?” he asked.

  She nodded, absently.

  He set the fish above the flames and hummed and washed his hands, and flashed his light at her from across the fire. She sat—and thought to herself about what she found when she compared herself to other people.

  She did feel cold, sometimes. But she didn’t suffer from it as other people did. And she felt hunger sometimes; but she could go long with little food, and hunger did not make her weak. She couldn’t remember ever feeling weak, exactly, for any reason. Nor could she remember ever having been ill. She thought back and was certain. She’d never even had a cough.

  She stared into the fire. They were a bit unusual, these things. She could see that. And she knew there was more.

  She fought and rode and ran and tumbled, but her skin rarely bruised or broke. She’d never broken a bone. And she didn’t suffer from pain the way other people did. Even when Po hit her very hard, the pain was easily manageable. If she was being honest, she’d have to admit that she didn’t quite
understand what other people meant when they complained of pain.

  She didn’t tire as other people did. She didn’t need much sleep. Most nights she made herself sleep, only because she knew she should.

  “Po?”

  He looked up from the fire.

  “Can you tell yourself to go to sleep?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, can you lie down and make yourself fall asleep? Whenever you want, instantly?”

  He squinted at her. “No. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Hmm.”

  He studied her for a moment longer, and then seemed to decide to let her be. She barely noticed him. It had never occurred to her before that the control she had over her sleep might be unusual. And it wasn’t just that she could command herself to sleep. She could command herself to sleep for a specific amount of time. And whenever she woke, she always knew exactly what time it was. At every moment of the day, in fact, she always knew the time.

  Just as she always knew exactly where she was and what direction she was facing.

  “Which way is north?” she asked Po.

  He looked up again and considered the light. He pointed in a direction that was loosely north, but not exactly. How did she know that with such certainty?

  She never got lost. She never had trouble building a fire, or shelter. She hunted so easily. Her vision and her hearing were better than those of anyone she’d ever known.

  She stood abruptly. She strode the few steps back to the pond and stared into it without seeing it.

  The physical needs that limited other people did not limit her. The things from which other people suffered did not touch her. She knew instinctively how to live and thrive in the wilderness.

  And she could kill anyone. At the slightest threat to her survival.

  Katsa sat on the ground suddenly. Could her Grace be survival?