Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  The instant she asked it, she denied it. She was just a killer, had always been just a killer. She’d killed a cousin, in plain view of Randa’s court—a man who wouldn’t have hurt her, not really. She’d murdered him, without a thought, without hesitation—just as she’d very nearly murdered her uncle.

  But she hadn’t murdered her uncle. She’d found a way to avoid it and stay alive.

  And she hadn’t meant for that cousin to die. She’d been a child, her Grace unformed. She hadn’t lashed out to kill him; she’d only lashed out to protect herself, to protect herself from his touch. She’d forgotten this, somewhere along the line, when the people of the court had begun to shy away from her and Randa had begun to use her skill for his own purposes, and call her his child killer.

  Her Grace was not killing. Her Grace was survival.

  She laughed then. For it was almost like saying her Grace was life; and of course, that was ridiculous.

  She stood again and turned back to the fire. Po watched her approach. He didn’t ask what she was thinking, he didn’t intrude; he would wait until she wanted to tell him. She looked at him measuring her from across the flames. He was plainly curious.

  “I’ve been comparing myself to other people,” she said.

  “I see,” he said, cautiously.

  She peeled back the skin of one of the roasting fish and sliced off a piece. She chewed on it and thought.

  “Po.”

  He looked up at her.

  “If you learned that my Grace wasn’t killing,” she said, “but survival…”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Would it surprise you?”

  He pursed his lips. “No. It makes much more sense to me.”

  “But—it’s like saying my Grace is life.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s absurd.”

  “Is it? I don’t think so. And it’s not just your own life,” he said. “You’ve saved many lives with your Grace.”

  She shook her head. “Not as many as I’ve hurt.”

  “Possibly. But you have the rest of your life to tip the balance. You’ll live long.”

  The rest of her life to tip the balance.

  Katsa peeled the flesh of another fish away from its bones. She broke the flaky meat apart and ate it, and thought about that, smiling.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE TREES gave way suddenly, and the mountains came upon them all at once; and with the mountains, the town that would take their horses. The buildings were made of stone or of heavy Sunderan wood, but it was the town’s backdrop that stopped Katsa’s breath. She’d seen the hills of Estill, but she’d never seen mountains. She’d never seen silver trees that climbed straight up into the sky, and rock and snow that climbed even higher, to peaks impossibly high that shone gold in the sun.

  “It reminds me of home,” Po said.

  “Lienid is like this?”

  “Parts of Lienid. My father’s city stands near mountains like these.”

  “Well,” Katsa said. “It reminds me of nothing, for I’ve never seen anything like it. I almost can’t believe I’m seeing it now.”

  There was no camping and no hunting for them that night. Their meal was cooked for them and served by the rough, friendly wife of the innkeeper, who seemed unconcerned with their Graceling eyes and wanted to know everything they’d seen on their journey, and everyone they’d passed. They ate in a room warm from the fire in a great stone fireplace. Hot stew, hot vegetables, hot bread, and the entire eating room to themselves. Chairs to sit on, and a table, and plates and spoons. Their baths afterwards warm; their bed warm, and softer than Katsa had remembered a bed could be. It was luxury, and they enjoyed it, for they knew it was the last such comfort they were likely to experience for some time.

  THEY LEFT before sunlight broke over the peaks, with provisions wrapped by the innkeeper’s wife, and cold water from the inn’s well. They carried most of their belongings, all that they had not left behind with the horses. One bow and one quiver, on Katsa’s back, as she was the better shot. Neither of their swords, though both carried dagger and knife. Their bedrolls, little clothing, coins, the medicines, the maps, the list of Council contacts.

  The sky they climbed toward turned purple, then orange and pink. The mountain path bore the signs of the crossings of others—fires gone cold, boot impressions in the dirt. In some places huts had been built for the use of travelers, empty of furniture but with crude, functional fireplaces. Built by the combined efforts of Sunder, Estill, and Monsea, in a time long ago when the kingdoms worked together for the safe passage of travelers across their borders.

  “A roof and four walls can save you, in a blizzard in the mountains,” Po said.

  “Were you ever caught in the mountains during a blizzard?”

  “I was once, with my brother Silvern. We were out climbing, and a storm surprised us. We found the hut of a woodsman—if we hadn’t, we’d likely be dead. We were trapped for four days. For four days we ate nothing but the bread and apples we’d brought along, and the snow. Our mother almost gave us up for lost.”

  “Which brother is Silvern?”

  “My father’s fifth son.”

  “It’s a shame you hadn’t the animal sense then that you have now. You could’ve gone out and unearthed a mole, or a squirrel.”

  “And lost myself on the way back to the hut,” he said. “Either that, or returned to a brother who’d think it was awfully suspicious that I’d managed to hunt in a blizzard.”

  They climbed over dirt and grass that gave way at times to rock, climbed always with the mountain peaks rising before them. It felt good to be out of the forest, to climb, to move fast. The vast, empty sky glinted its sun onto her face and filled her lungs with air. She was content.

  “Why have you never trusted your brothers with your Grace?”

  “My mother forbade me when I was a child, absolutely forbade me to tell them. I hated to keep it from them—particularly Silvern, and Skye, who’s closest in age to me. But now I know my brothers as men, and I see my mother was right.”

  “Why? Aren’t they to be trusted?”

  “They are, with most things. But they’re all made of ambition, Katsa, every one of them, constantly playing off each other to gain favor with my father. As things stand now, I’m no threat to them—because I’m the youngest and have no ambition. And they respect me, for they know it would take all six of them together to beat me in a fight. But if they knew the truth of my Grace they’d try to use me. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves.”

  “But you wouldn’t let them.”

  “No, but then they’d resent me, and I’m not sure one of them wouldn’t give in to the temptation to tell his wife or his advisers. And my father would learn … It would all fall apart.”

  They stopped at a trickle of water. Katsa drank some and washed her face. “Your mother had foresight.”

  “Above all, she feared my father learning of it.” He lowered his flask into the water. “He’s not an unkind father. But it’s hard to be king. Men will trick power away from a king, however they can. I would’ve been too useful to him. He couldn’t have resisted using me—he simply couldn’t. And that was the greatest thing my mother feared.”

  “Did he never want to use you as a fighter?”

  “Certainly, and I’ve helped him. Not as you’ve helped Randa—my father isn’t the bully Randa is. But it was my mind that my mother feared him using. She wanted my mind to be my own, and not his.”

  It didn’t seem right to Katsa that a mother should have to protect her child from its father. But she didn’t know much of mothers and fathers. She hadn’t had a mother or a father to protect her from Randa’s use. Perhaps rather than fathers, it was kings that were the danger.

  “Your grandfather agreed that no one should know the truth of your Grace?”

  “My grandfather agreed.”

  “Would your father be very angry, if he learned the truth now?”

&nb
sp; “He’d be furious, with me, my mother, and my grandfather. They’d all be furious. And rightfully so; it’s a huge deception we’ve pulled off, Katsa.”

  “You had to.”

  “Nonetheless. It would not be easily forgiven.”

  Katsa pulled herself onto a jumble of stones and stopped to look around. They seemed no closer to the tops of the peaks that rose before them. It was only by looking back, to the forest far below, that she knew they’d climbed; that, and the drop in temperature. She shifted her bags and stepped back onto the trail.

  And then the thought of queens protecting children from kings registered more deeply in her mind.

  Po. Leck has a daughter.

  “Yes, Bitterblue. She’s ten.”

  Bitterblue could have a role in this strange affair. If Leck was trying to hurt her, it would explain Queen Ashen hiding away with her.

  Po stopped in his tracks and turned to look at her anxiously. “If he cuts up animals for pleasure, I hate to think what he would want with his own daughter.”

  The question hung in the air between them, eerie and horrible. Katsa thought suddenly of the two dead little girls.

  “Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Po said, his hand to his stomach as if he felt ill.

  “Let’s move faster,” Katsa said, “just in case I’m right.”

  They set off almost at a run. They followed the path upward, through the mountains that separated them from Monsea and whatever truth it contained.

  THEY WOKE the next morning on the floor of a dusty hut to a dead fire and a winter cold that seeped through the crack under the door. The frozen stars melted as Katsa and Po climbed, and light spread across the horizon. The path grew steeper and more rocky. The pace of their climb pushed away the chill and the stiffness that Katsa didn’t feel but that Po complained of.

  “I’ve been thinking about how we should approach Leck’s court,” Po said. He climbed from one rock to another and jumped to a third.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Well, I’d like to be more certain of our suspicions before meeting him.”

  “Should we find an inn outside the court, and stay there our first night?”

  “That’s my thought.”

  “But we shouldn’t waste any time.”

  “No. If we can’t learn anything helpful in one night, then perhaps we should go ahead and present ourselves to the court.”

  They climbed, and Katsa wondered what that would be like—whether they would pose as friends to the court and infiltrate it gradually, or whether they would enter on the offensive and instigate an enormous fight. She pictured Leck as a smirking, insincere man standing at the end of a velvet carpet, his single eye narrowed and clever. She imagined herself shooting an arrow into his heart, so that he crumpled to his knees, bled all over his carpet, and died at the feet of his stewards. At Po’s command, her strike. It would have to be at Po’s command, for until they knew the truth of his Grace, she couldn’t trust her own judgment. Po? That’s true, isn’t it?

  He took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I’ve some ideas about that as well,” he said. “Once we’re in Monsea, would you consent to do what I say, and only what I say? Just until I have a sense of Leck’s power? Would you ever consent to that?”

  “Of course I would, Po, in this case.”

  “And you must expect me to behave strangely. I’ll have to pretend I’m Graced with fighting, no more, and that I believe every word he says.”

  “And I’ll practice my archery, and my knife throwing,” Katsa said. “For I’ve a feeling that when all is asked and revealed, King Leck will find himself on the end of my blade.”

  Po shook his head and did not smile. “I’ve a feeling it’s not going to be that easy.”

  THE THIRD DAY of their crossing was the windiest, and the coldest. The mountain pass led them between two peaks that were hidden, sometimes, behind cyclones of snow. Their boots crunched through patches of snow; and flakes drifted onto their shoulders from the thin blue sky and melted into Katsa’s hair.

  “I like winter in the mountains,” she said, but Po laughed.

  “This isn’t winter in the mountains. This is autumn in the mountains, and a mild autumn at that. Winter is ferocious.”

  “I think I should like that, too,” she said, and Po laughed again.

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. You’d thrive on the challenge of it.”

  The weather held, so that Katsa’s declaration could not be put to the test. They moved as fast as the terrain would permit. For all his marveling at Katsa’s energy, Po was strong and quick. He teased her for the pace she set, but he didn’t complain; and if he stopped sometimes for food and water, Katsa was grateful, for it reminded her to eat and drink as well. And it gave her an excuse to turn around and stare behind them, at the mountains that stretched from east to west, at the whole world she could see—for she was so high that she felt she could see the whole world.

  And then suddenly, they reached the top of the pass. Before them the mountains plunged into a forest of pines. Green valleys stretched beyond, broken by streams and farmhouses and tiny dots that Katsa guessed were cows. And a line, a river, that thinned into the distance and led to a miniature white city at the edge of their sight. Leck City.

  “I can barely see it,” Po said, “but I trust your vision.”

  “I see buildings,” Katsa said, “and a dark wall around a white castle. And look, see the farmhouses in the valley? Surely you can make those out. And the cows, do you see the cows?”

  “Yes, I can see them, now that you mention it. It’s gorgeous, Katsa. Have you ever seen a sight so gorgeous?”

  She laughed at his happiness. For a moment, as they looked down on Monsea, the world was beautiful and without worry.

  THE DOWNHILL scramble was more treacherous than the uphill climb. Po complained that his toes were liable to burst through the front of his boots; and then he complained that he wished they would, for they ached from the constant downhill beat of his feet. And then Katsa noticed that he stopped complaining altogether and sank into a preoccupation.

  “Po. We’re moving fast.”

  “Yes.” He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted down at the fields of Monsea. “I only hope it’s fast enough.”

  They camped that night beside a stream that ran with melting snow. She sat on a rock and watched his eyes that glimmered with worry. He glanced at her and smiled suddenly. “Would you like something sweet to eat with this rabbit?”

  “Of course,” she said, “but it makes little difference what I want, if all we have is rabbit.”

  He stood then and turned away into the scrub.

  Where are you going?

  He didn’t answer. His boots scraped on rock as he disappeared into blackness.

  She stood. “Po!”

  “Don’t worry your heart, Katsa.” His voice came from a distance. “I’m only finding what you want.”

  “If you think I’m just going to sit here—”

  “Sit down. You’ll ruin my surprise.”

  She sat, but she let him know what she thought of him and his surprise, rattling around in the dark and breaking his ankles on the rocks most likely, so she’d have to carry him the rest of the way down the mountain. A few minutes passed, and she heard him returning. He stepped into the light and came to her, his hand cupped before him. When he knelt before her, she saw a little mound of berries in his palm. She looked into the shadows of his face.

  “Winterberries?” she asked. “Winterberries.” She took one from his hand and bit into it. It popped with a cold sweetness. She swallowed the soft flesh and watched his face, confused. “Your Grace showed them to you, these winterberries.”

  “Yes.”

  “Po. This is new, isn’t it? That you should sense a plant with such clarity. It’s not as if it were moving or thinking or about to crash down on top of you.”

  He sat back on his heels. He tilted his head. “The world is filling in a
round me,” he said, “piece by piece. The fuzziness is clearing. To be honest, it’s a bit disorienting. I’m ever so slightly dizzy.”

  Katsa stared at him. There was nothing to say in response to this; his Grace was showing him winterberries, and he was ever so slightly dizzy. Tomorrow he would be able to tell her about a landslide on the other side of the world, and they would both faint.

  She sighed and touched the gold in his ear. “If you put your feet into the stream, the snow water will soothe your toes, and I’ll rub the warmth back into them when you’re done.”

  “And if I’m cold in places other than my toes? Will you warm me there, too?”

  His voice was a grin, and she laughed into his face. But then he took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes, seriously. “Katsa. When we get closer to Leck, you must do whatever I tell you to. Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “You must, Katsa. You must swear it.”

  “Po. I’ve promised it before, and I’ll promise it again, and swear it, too. I’ll do what you say.”

  He watched her eyes, and then he nodded. He emptied the last few berries into her hand and bent down to his boots.

  “My toes are such a misery, I’m not sure it’s wise to release them. They may revolt and run off into the mountains and refuse to return.”

  She ate another winterberry. “I expect I’m more than a match for your toes.”

  THE NEXT DAY there were no more jokes from Po, about his toes or anything else. He hardly spoke, and the farther they moved down the path that led to King Leck, the more anxious he seemed to become. His mood was contagious. Katsa was uneasy.

  “You’ll do what I say, when the time comes?” he asked her once.

  She opened her mouth to give voice to a surge of irritation at the question she’d already answered and must now answer again. But at the sight of him trudging down the path beside her, tense and worried, she lost hold of her anger.

  “I’ll do what you say, Po.”