"You've healed well," Bitterblue said. "There's no question who won that fight."
"For all that," Katsa said, "we weren't evenly matched, and the cat had the advantage. On a different day it would've killed me."
"I wish I had your skill," Bitterblue said. "I'd like to be able to defend myself against anything."
It wasn't the first time Bitterblue had said something like that. And it was only one of countless times Katsa had remembered, with a stab of panic, that Bitterblue was wrong; that in her one and only encounter with Leck, Katsa had been defenseless.
———
Still, Bitterblue didn't have to be as defenseless as she was. When Patch teased her one day about the knife she wore sheathed at her belt – the same knife, big as her forearm, she'd carried since the day Katsa and Po had found her in Leck's forest – Katsa decided the time had come to make a threat of Bitterblue. Or as much of a threat as the child could be. How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people – girls, women – went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.
And so Katsa began to teach the girl. First to feel comfortable with a knife in her hand. To hold it properly, so that it wouldn't slip from her fingers; to carry it easily, as if it were a natural extension of her arm. This first lesson gave the child more trouble than Katsa had anticipated. The knife was heavy. It was also sharp. It made Bitterblue nervous to carry an open blade across a floor that lurched and dipped. She held the hilt much too tightly, so tightly her arm ached and blisters formed on her palm.
"You fear your own knife," Katsa said.
"I'm afraid of falling on it," Bitterblue said, "or hurting someone with it by accident."
"That's natural enough. But you're just as likely to lose control of it if you're holding it too tightly as too loosely. Loosen your grip, child. It won't fall from your fingers if you hold it as I've taught you."
And so the child would relax the hand that held the knife, until the floor tipped again or one of the sailors came near; and then she would forget what Katsa had said and grip the blade again with all her strength.
Katsa changed tactics. She put an end to official lessons, and instead had Bitterblue walk around the ship with the knife in her hand all afternoon for several days. Knife in hand, the child visited the sailors who were her friends, climbed the ladder between decks, ate meals in the galley, and craned her neck to watch Katsa scrambling around in the riggings. At first she sighed often and passed the knife heavily from one hand to the other. But then, after a day or two, it seemed not to bother her so much. A few days more and the knife swung loosely at her side. Not forgotten, for Katsa could see the care she took with the blade when the floor rocked, or when a friend was near. But comfortable in her hand. Familiar. And now, finally, it was time for the girl to learn how to use the weapon she held.
The next few lessons progressed slowly. Bitterblue was persistent and ferociously determined; but her muscles were untrained, unused to the motions Katsa now expected of her.
Katsa was hard-pressed sometimes to know what to teach her. There was some use in teaching the child to block or deliver blows in the traditional sense – some, but not much. She would never last long in a battle if she tried to fight by the usual rules. "What you must do," Katsa told her, "is inflict as much pain as possible and watch for an opening."
"And ignore your own pain," Jem said, "as best you can." Jem helped with the lessons, as did Bear, and any other of the sailors who could find the time. Some days the lessons served as mealtime distractions for the men in the galley, or on fine days as diversions in the corner of the deck. The sailors didn't all understand why a young girl should be learning to fight. But none of them laughed at her efforts, even when the methods Katsa encouraged her to use were as undignified as biting, scratching, and hair pulling.
"You don't need to be strong to drive your thumbs into a man's eyeballs," Katsa said, "but it does a lot of damage."
"That's disgusting," Bitterblue said.
"Someone your size doesn't have the luxury of fighting cleanly, Bitterblue."
"I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm only saying it's disgusting." Katsa tried to hide her smile. "Yes, well. I suppose it is disgusting."
She showed Bitterblue all of the soft places to stab a man if she wanted to kill him – throat, neck, stomach, eyes – the easy places that required less force. She taught Bitterblue to hide a small knife in her boot and how to whip it out quickly.
How to drive a knife with both hands and how to hold one in either hand. How to keep from dropping a knife in the bedlam of an attack, when everything was happening so fast your mind couldn't keep up.
"That's the way to do it," Red called out one day when Bitterblue had elbowed Bear successfully in the groin and bent him over double, groaning.
"And now that he's distracted," Katsa said, "what will you do?"
"Stab him in the neck with my knife," Bitterblue said. "Good girl."
"She's a plucky little thing," Red said, approvingly.
She wa s a plucky little thing. So little, so completely little, that Katsa knew, as every one of these sailors must know, how much luck she would need if she were to defend herself from an attacker. But what she was learning would give her a fighting chance. The confidence she was gaining would also help. These men, these sailors who stood on the side shouting their encouragement – they helped, too, more than they could know.
"Of course, she'll never need these skills," Red added. "A princess of Monsea will always have bodyguards."
Katsa didn't say the first words that came to her mind. "It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them," she said.
"I can't deny that, Lady Princess. No one would know that better than you, or Prince Po. I imagine the two of you could whip a whole troop of children into a decent army."
A vision of Po, dizzy and unsteady on his feet, flashed into Katsa's mind. She pushed it away. She went to check on Bear and focused her thoughts on Bitterblue's next drill.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Katsa was in the riggings with Red when she first saw Lienid. It was just how Po had described it; and it was unreal, like something out of a tapestry, or a song. Dark cliffs rose from the sea, snow-covered fields atop them. Rising from the fields a pillar of rock, and atop the rock, a city. Gleaming so bright that at first Katsa was sure it was made of gold.
As the ship drew closer she saw that she wasn't so wrong. The buildings of the city were brown sandstone, yellow marble, and white quartz that sparkled with the light from sky and water. And the domes and turrets of the structure that rose above the others and sprawled across the skyline were, in fact, gold: Ror's castle and Po's childhood home. So big and so bright that Katsa hung from the riggings with her mouth hanging open. Red laughed at her and yelled down to Patch that one thing, at least, stilled the Lady Princess's climbing and scrambling.
"Land ho!" he called then, and men up and down the deck cheered. Red slithered down, but Katsa stayed in the riggings and watched Ror City grow larger before her. She could make out the road that spiraled from the base of the pillar up to the city, and the platforms, too, rising from fields to city on ropes too thin for her eyes to discern. When the ship skirted the southeast edge of Lienid and headed north, she swung around and kept the city in her sight until it disappeared. It hurt her eyes, almost, Ror City; and it didn't surprise her that Po should come from a place that shone.
Or a land so dramatically beautiful. The ship wound around the island kingdom, north and then west, and Katsa barely blinked. She saw beaches white with sand, and sometimes with snow. Mountains disappearing into storm clouds. Towns of stone built into stone and hanging, camouflaged, above the sea. Trees on a cliff, stark and leafless, black against a winter sky.
"Po trees," Patch said to her when she pointed them out. "Did our prince tell you? The leaves
turn silver and gold in the fall. They were beautiful two months ago."
"They're beautiful now."
"I suppose. But Lienid is gray in the winter. The other seasons are an explosion of color. You'll see, Lady Princess."
Katsa glanced at him in surprise, and then wondered why she should be surprised. She would see, if she stayed here long enough, and likely she'd be here some time. Her plans once they reached Po's castle were vague. She would explore the building, learn its hiding places, and fortify it. She would set a guard, with whatever staff she found there. She would think and plan and wait to hear something of Po or Leck. And just as she fortified the castle, she would fortify her mind, against any news she heard that might carry the poison of Leck's lies.
"I know what you've asked us to do, Lady Princess," Patch said beside her.
This time she looked at him with true surprise. He watched the passing trees, his face grave.
"Captain Faun told me," he said. "She's told a few of us – a very few. She wants a number of us on her side when the time comes to tell the rest."
"And are you on her side, then?" Katsa asked.
"She brought me to her side, eventually."
"I'm glad," Katsa said. "And I'm sorry."
"It isn't your doing, Lady Princess. It's the doing of the monster who's the King of Monsea."
A light snow began to fall. Katsa reached her hands out to meet it.
"What do you think is wrong with him, Lady Princess?" Patch asked.
Katsa caught a snowflake in the middle of her palm. "What do you mean, wrong with him?"
"Well, why does it pleasure him to hurt people?" Katsa shrugged. "His Grace makes it so easy."
"But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people," Patch said. "It doesn't mean they do."
"I don't know," Katsa said, thinking of Randa and Murgon and the other kings and their senseless acts. "It seems to me that a fair number of people are happy to be as cruel as their power allows, and no one's more powerful than Leck. I don't know why he does it, I only know we need to stop him."
"Do you think Leck knows where you are, Lady Princess?"
Katsa watched flakes melting into the sea. She sighed.
"We crossed paths with very few people," she said, "once we left Monsea. And we told no one our destination, until we boarded this ship. But – he saw both of us, Patch, both me and Po, and of course he recognized us. There are only a few places we could hide the child. He'll look for her here eventually. I must find a place to hide, in the castle or on the lands. Or even someplace in the Lienid wilderness."
"The weather will be harsh, Lady Princess, until spring."
"Yes. Well, I may not be able to keep her comfortable. But I'll keep her safe."
———
Po had said his castle was small, more akin to a large house than a castle. But after seeing the way Ror's castle filled the sky, Katsa wondered if Po's scale of measure might differ from other people's. Randa's castle was large. Ror's was gargantuan. Where Po's fit in was yet to be seen.
When she finally did see Po's castle, she was pleased. It was small, or at least it seemed it from her position in the riggings of the ship far below. It was simply built of whitewashed stone, the balconies and the window frames painted a blue to match the sky, and only a single square tower, rising somewhere from the back, to suggest it was more than a house. Its position, of course, was far from simple, and its position pleased Katsa even more than its simplicity. A cliff reached up and out from the water, and the castle balanced at the cliff's very edge. It looked as if it might tumble forward at any moment, as if the wind might find purchase in some crack in the foundations, and tip the castle, creaking and screaming, over the drop and into the sea. She could understand why the balconies were dangerous in winter. Some of them hung over empty space.
Below the castle, the sea threw itself against the base of the cliff. But there was one nook in the rock, one small inlet where water broke and foamed onto sand. A tiny beach. And a stairway leading up from the beach, rising against the side of the cliff, turning back on itself, disappearing occasionally, and climbing finally up the side of the castle and onto one of those dizzying balconies.
"Where will we dock?" she asked the captain when she'd scrambled down to the deck.
"There's a bay on the other side of this rise of rock, some distance beyond the beach. We'll dock there. A path leads up from the bay and away from the castle – you'll think you're going the wrong way, Lady Princess – but then it loops back, and takes you up a great hill to the castle's front. There may be snow, but the path is kept clear in case the prince returns."
"You speak as if you know it well."
"I captained a smaller ship a few years back, Lady Princess, a supply ship. The castles of Lienid are all beautifully situated, but believe me when I tell you they're none of them easy to supply. It's a steep path to the door."
"How large a staff does he keep?"
"I'd expect very few people, Lady Princess. And I'll remind you that it's your castle at the moment, and your servants, though you continue to refer to them as his."
Yes, this she knew; and it was one of the reasons she wasn't looking forward to her first encounter with the inhabitants of the castle. The appearance of Lady Katsa of the Middluns, renowned thug, in possession of Po's ring; the absurd, tragic story she had to tell about Leck and Ashen; and her subsequent intentions to turn the castle into a fortress and cut off contact with the outside world. Katsa had a feeling it wouldn't go smoothly.
———
The path was just as Captain Faun had described, and the hill steep and ridged with drifts of snow. But the greater problem was Bitterblue's sea legs. She walked on land almost as clumsily as she'd walked at first at sea, and Katsa held her up as they climbed toward Po's front door. The wind gusted from behind, so that it felt as if they were being blown up the hill.
The castle wasn't much more castlelike from this angle. It seemed a tall white house at the top of a slope, with a number of massive trees overshadowing a courtyard that would be pleasant in better weather; a great tower rising behind the trees; tall windows, high roofs, at least one widow's walk; stables to one side and a frozen garden to the other; and no indication, as long as one's ears didn't catch the crash of waves, that behind it all was a drop to the sea.
They reached the top of the hill. A gust of wind pushed them onto the colorful tiled surface of the courtyard. Bitterblue sighed, relieved to encounter flat land. They approached the house, and Katsa raised her fist to Po's great wooden door. Before she could knock, the door swung open and a rush of warmth hit their faces. A Lienid man stood before her, oldish, dressed like a servant in a long brown coat.
"Greetings," he said. "Please come into the receiving room. Quickly," the man said, as Katsa stood unmoving, startled by his hasty reception. "We're letting the heat escape."
The man ushered them into a dark hall. At first glance, Katsa saw high ceilings, a stairway leading to banistered passageways above, and at least three burning fireplaces. Bitterblue steadied herself on Katsa's arm.
"I'm Lady Katsa of the Middluns," Katsa began, but the man waved them forward toward a set of double doors. "This way," he said. "My master is expecting you." Katsa's jaw went slack with surprise. She stared at the man, incredulous. "Your master! Do you mean he's here? How is that possible? Where is he?"
"Please, My Lady," the servant said. "Come this way. The whole family is in the receiving room."
"The whole family!"
The man swept his hand toward the doors straight ahead. Katsa looked at Bitterblue and knew that the girl's astonished face must mirror her own. Certainly there had been time for Po to make his way home; Katsa and Bitterblue had been ages in the mountains. But how could he, in such health? And how leave his hiding place, without being seen? Why, how –
The man shooed them forward to the doors, and Katsa tried to formulate a question, any question.
"How long has the prince been here?"
she asked.
"The princes have only just arrived," the man said, and before she could ask what he meant he opened the doors.
"How wonderful," a voice inside said. "Welcome, my friends! Come in and take your honored place among our happy circle!"
It was a familiar voice, and she caught Bitterblue and held the girl to her side when the child gasped and fell. Katsa looked up to see strangers sitting around the walls of a long room; and at the room's end, smiling and appraising them through a single eye, King Leck of Monsea.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Welcome. Friends. Honored place. Happy circle.
Katsa felt immediately that there was something she didn't trust about this man who said such nice things, and in such a nice, warm voice. There was something about him, some quality that kept her senses strung out to a high readiness. She did not like him.
Still, his words were kind and welcoming, and this room of strangers smiled at him, and smiled at her, and there was no reason for her discomfort. No reason to dislike the man so instantly. She hesitated in the doorway, and stepped forward. She would proceed carefully.
The child was sick. Giving in finally, Katsa thought, to the dizzying steadiness under her feet. Bitterblue cried and clung to Katsa, and kept telling her to come away. "He's lying," she kept saying. "He's lying." Katsa looked at her blankly. Clearly the child didn't like this man, either. Katsa would take that into consideration.
"My daughter is ill. It pains me to see my daughter suffer," Leck said; and Katsa remembered and understood that this man was Bitterblue's father. "Help your niece," Leck said to a woman on his left. The woman jumped up and came toward them with outstretched arms.
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