Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  He could do that, and no one would have reason to question it. She put out the last torch and walked back to him. Half of his face was lit by the light in the hall outside the door. It was his gold eye, his blackened eye, that was illuminated. She looked up at him and set her chin.

  “I’ll train with you,” she said. “But don’t expect me to take more care of your face than I did today.”

  He burst into laughter, but then his eyes sobered, and he looked at the floor. “Forgive me for that, Katsa. I wished to make an ally of Lord Giddon, not an enemy. It seemed the only way.”

  Katsa shook her head with impatience. “Giddon is a fool.”

  “He reacted naturally enough,” he said, “considering his position.”

  He brought his fingertips to her chin suddenly. She froze, forgetting the question she’d been about to ask, regarding Giddon, and what in the Middluns his position should be. He tilted her face to the light.

  “It was my ring.”

  She didn’t understand him.

  “It was my ring that scratched you.”

  “Your ring.”

  “Well, one of my rings.”

  It was one of his rings that scratched her, and now his fingertips touched her face. His hand dropped, returning to his side, and he looked at her calmly, as if this were normal, as if friends she’d only just made always touched her face with their fingertips. As if she ever made friends. As if she had any basis for comparison, to decide what was normal when one made friends, and what was not.

  She was not normal.

  She marched to the doorway and grabbed the torch from the wall. “Come,” she said. For it was time to get him out of here, this strange person, this cat-eyed person who seemed created to rattle her. She would knock those eyes out of his face the next time they fought. She would knock the hoops from his ears and the rings from his hands.

  It was time to get him out of here, so that she could return to her rooms and return to herself.

  Chapter Ten

  HE WAS a marvelous opponent. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t hit him where she meant to, or as hard as she wanted. He was so quick to block or to twist, so quick to react. She couldn’t knock him from his feet, she couldn’t trap him when their fight had devolved into a wrestling match on the floor.

  He was so much stronger than she, and for the first time in her life, she found her lesser strength to be a disadvantage. No one had ever gotten close enough to her for it to matter, before this.

  He was so finely tuned to his surroundings, and to her movements; and that was also part of the challenge. He always seemed to know what she was doing, even when she was behind him.

  “I’ll grant you don’t have night vision if you’ll grant you have eyes in the back of your head,” she said once, when she’d entered the practice room and he’d greeted her without looking round to identify her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You always know what’s happening behind you.”

  “Katsa, do you never notice the noise you make when you burst into a room? No one flings doors open the way you do.”

  “Perhaps your Grace gives you a heightened sense of things,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Perhaps, but no more than your own.”

  He still got the worst of their fights, because of her flexibility and her tireless energy, and mostly because of her speed. She might not hit him how she wanted, but she still hit him. And he suffered pain more. He stopped the fight once while she grappled to pin his arm and his legs and his back to the ground and he hit her repeatedly in the ribs with his one free hand.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” he said, gasping with laughter. “Don’t you feel it? I’ve hit you possibly twelve times, and you don’t even flinch.”

  She sat up on her heels and felt the spot, below her breast. “It hurts, but it’s not bad.”

  “Your bones are made of rock. You walk away from these fights without a sore spot, while I limp away and spend the day icing my bruises.”

  He didn’t wear his rings while they fought. He’d come without them the first day. When she’d protested that it was an unnecessary precaution, his face had assumed a mask of innocence.

  “I promised Giddon, didn’t I?” he’d said, and that fight had begun with Po ducking, and laughing, as Katsa swung at his face.

  They didn’t wear their boots, either, not after Katsa accidentally clipped him on the forehead. He had dropped to his hands and knees, and she saw at once what had happened. “Call Raff!” she’d cried to Oll, who watched on the side. She’d sat Po on the floor, ripped off her own sleeve, and tried to stop the flow of blood that ran into his dazed eyes. When Raffin had given him the go-ahead to fight a few days later, she’d insisted they fight barefoot. And in truth, she had taken more care of his face since then.

  They almost always practiced in front of an audience. A scattering of soldiers, or underlords. Oll, whenever he could, for the fights gave him so much pleasure. Giddon, though he always seemed to grow grumpy as he watched and never stayed long. Even Helda came on occasion, the only woman who did, and sat with wide eyes that grew wider the longer she sat.

  Randa did not come, which was pleasant. Katsa was glad of his tendency to keep her at arm’s length.

  They ate together most days, after practicing. In her dining room, alone, or in Raffin’s workrooms with Raffin and Bann. Sometimes at a table Raffin had brought into Tealiff’s room. The grandfather was still very ill, but company seemed to cheer and strengthen him.

  When they sat together talking, sometimes the silver and gold of Po’s eyes caught her off guard. She could not become used to his eyes; they muddled her. But she met them when he looked at her, and she forced herself to breathe and talk and not become overwhelmed. They were eyes, they were only his eyes, and she wasn’t a coward. And besides, she didn’t want to behave toward him as the entire court behaved toward her, avoiding her eyes, awkwardly, coldly. She didn’t want to do that to a friend.

  He was a friend; and in the final few weeks of summer, for the first time in her life, Randa’s court became a place of contentment for Katsa. A place of good hard work and of friends. Oll’s spies moved steadily, learning what they could from their travels to Nander and Estill. The kingdoms, amazingly, were at peace. The heat and the closeness of the air seemed to bring a lull to Randa’s cruelty as well, or perhaps he was merely distracted by the flood of foods and wares that always washed into the city from every trade route at that time of year. Whatever the reason, Randa did not summon Katsa to perform any of his nasty errands. Katsa found herself daring to relax into summer’s end.

  She never ran out of questions for Po.

  “Where’d you get your name?” she asked him one day as they sat in the grandfather’s room, talking quietly so as not to wake him.

  Po wound a cloth wrapped with ice around his shoulder. “Which one? I’ve got lots to choose from.”

  Katsa reached across the table to help him tie the cloth tight. “Po. Does everyone call you that?”

  “My brothers gave me that name when I was little. It’s a kind of tree in Lienid, the po tree. In autumn its leaves turn silver and gold. Inevitable nickname, I guess.”

  Katsa broke a piece of bread. She wondered if the name had been given fondly, or if it had been an attempt by Po’s brothers to isolate him—to remind him always that he was a Graceling. She watched him pile his plate high with bread, meat, fruit, and cheese and smiled as the food began to disappear almost as fast as he’d piled it up. Katsa could eat a lot, but Po was something else altogether.

  “What is it like to have six older brothers?”

  “I don’t think it was for me what it would be for most others,” he said. “Hand fighting is revered in Lienid. My brothers are great fighters, and of course I was able to hold my own with them, even though I was small—and eventually surpass them, every one of them. They treated me like an equal, like more than an equal.”

  “And were they also your frie
nds?”

  “Oh yes, especially the younger ones.”

  Perhaps it was easier, then, to be a Graceling fighter if one was a boy or in a kingdom that revered hand fighting; or perhaps Po’s Grace had announced itself less drastically than Katsa’s had. Perhaps if Katsa had six older brothers, she would also have six friends.

  Or maybe everything was different in Lienid.

  “I’ve heard the Lienid castles are built on mountain peaks so high that people have to be lifted up to them by ropes,” she said.

  Po grinned. “Only my father’s city has the ropes.” He poured himself more water and turned back to the food on his plate.

  “Well?” Katsa said. “Are you going to explain them to me?”

  “Katsa. Is it too much for you to understand that a man might be hungry after you’ve beaten him half to death? I’m beginning to think it’s part of your fighting strategy, keeping me from eating. You want me weak and faint.”

  “For someone who’s Lienid’s finest fighter,” she said, “you have a delicate constitution.”

  He laughed and put his fork down. “All right, all right. How can I describe this?” He picked his fork up again and used it to draw a picture in the air as he spoke. “My father’s city sits at the top of this enormous, tall rock, tall as a mountain, that rises straight up from the plains below. There are three ways up to the city. One is a road built into the sides of the rock, that winds around and around it, slowly. The second is a stairway built into one side of the rock. It bends back and forth on itself until it reaches the top. It’s a good approach, if you’re strong and wide awake and don’t have a horse, though most who choose that route eventually tire and end up begging a ride from someone on the road. My brothers and I race it sometimes.”

  “Who wins?”

  “Where’s your confidence in me, that you need to ask that question? You would beat us all, of course.”

  “My ability to fight has no bearing on my ability to run up a flight of stairs.”

  “Nonetheless, I can’t imagine you allowing anyone to beat you at anything.”

  Katsa snorted. “And the third way?”

  “The third way is the ropes.”

  “But how do they work?”

  Po scratched his head. “Well, it’s fairly simple, really. They hang from a great wheel that sits flat, on its side, at the top of the rock. They dangle down over the edge of the rock, and at the bottom they’re attached to platforms. Horses turn the wheel, the wheel pulls the ropes, and the platforms rise.”

  “It seems a terrible amount of trouble.”

  “Mostly everyone uses the road. The ropes are only for great shipments of things.”

  “And the whole city sits up in the sky?”

  Po broke himself another piece of bread and nodded.

  “But why would they build a city in such a place?”

  Po shrugged. “I suppose because it’s beautiful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you can see forever from the edges of the city. The fields, the mountains and hills. To one side, the sea.”

  “The sea,” Katsa said.

  The sea put an end to her questions for a moment. Katsa had seen the lakes of Nander, some of them so wide she could barely make out the opposite shore. But she’d never seen the sea. She couldn’t imagine that much water. Nor could she imagine water that rocked, and crashed against the land, as she’d heard the sea did. She stared absently at the walls of Tealiff’s small room, and tried to think of it.

  “You can see two of my brothers’ castles from the city,” Po said. “In the foothills of the mountains. The other castles are beyond the mountains, or too far to see.”

  “How many castles are there?”

  “Seven,” Po said, “just as there are seven sons.”

  “Then one is yours.”

  “The smallest one.”

  “Do you mind that yours is the smallest?”

  Po chose an apple from the bowl of fruit on the table. “I’m glad mine is the smallest, though my brothers don’t believe me when I say so.”

  She didn’t blame them for disbelieving. She’d never heard of a man, not even her cousin, who didn’t want as large a holding as he could have. Giddon was always comparing his estate to that of his neighbors; and when Raffin listed his complaints about Thigpen, he never neglected to mention a certain disagreement over the precise location of the Middluns’ eastern border. She’d thought all men were like that. She’d thought she wasn’t like that because she wasn’t a man.

  “I don’t have the ambitions of my brothers,” Po said. “I’ve never wanted a large holding. I’ve never wanted to be a king or an overlord.”

  “No,” Katsa said, “nor have I. I’ve thanked the hills countless times that Raffin was born the son of Randa, and I only his niece, and his sister’s daughter at that.”

  “My brothers want all that power,” he said. “They love to get wrapped up in the disputes of my father’s court. They actually revel in it. They love managing their own castles and their own cities. I do believe sometimes that they all wish to be king.”

  He leaned back in his chair and absently ran his fingers along his sore shoulder.

  “My castle doesn’t have a city,” he said. “It’s not far from a town, but the town governs itself. It doesn’t have a court, either. Really it’s just a great house that’ll be my home for the times when I’m not traveling.”

  Katsa took an apple for herself. “You intend to travel.”

  “I’m more restless than my brothers. But it’s so beautiful, my castle; it’s the most wonderful place to go home to. It sits on a cliff above the sea. There are steps down to the water, cut into the cliff. And balconies hanging over the cliff—you feel as if you’ll fall if you lean too far. At night the sun goes down across the water, and the whole sky turns red and orange, and the sea to match it. Sometimes there are great fish out there, fish of impossible colors. They come to the surface and roll about—you can watch them from the balconies. And in winter the waves are high, and the wind’ll knock you down. You can’t go out to the balconies in winter. It’s dangerous, and wild.

  “Grandfather,” he said suddenly. He jumped up and turned to the bed. Informed that his grandfather had awoken, Katsa thought wryly, by the eyes in the back of his head.

  “You speak of your castle, boy,” the old man said.

  “Grandfather, how are you feeling?”

  Katsa ate her apple and listened to them talk. Her head was full of the things Po had said. She hadn’t known there were sights in the world so beautiful a person would want to spend an age staring at them.

  Po turned to her then, and a torch on the wall caught the gleam of his eyes. She focused on breathing. “I have a weakness for beautiful sights,” he said. “My brothers tease me.”

  “Your brothers are the foolish ones,” Tealiff said, “for not seeing the strength in beautiful things. Come here, child,” he said to Katsa. “Let me see your eyes, for they make me stronger.”

  And his kindness brought a smile to her face, though his words were nonsense. She went to sit beside Grandfather Tealiff, and he and Po told her more about Po’s castle and Po’s brothers and Ror’s city in the sky.

  Chapter Eleven

  “HOW FAR IS Giddon’s estate from Randa City?” Po asked her late one morning. They sat on the floor of their practice room, drinking water and resting. It had been a good session. Po had returned the day before from a visit to Nander, and Katsa thought the time apart had been good for them. They came together again with a new sharpness.

  “It’s near,” Katsa said. “In the west. A day’s journey, perhaps.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Yes. It’s large and very grand. He doesn’t get home often, but he still manages to keep it well.”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  Giddon had come to their practice today. He’d been the only visitor, and he hadn’t stayed long. She didn’t know why he came, when it alwa
ys seemed to put him in a bad humor.

  Katsa lay on her back and looked up at the high ceiling. The light poured into the room from the great, east-facing windows. The days were beginning to shorten. The air would crispen soon, and the castle would smell of wood burning in the fireplaces. The leaves would crackle under her horse’s hooves when she went riding.

  It had been such a quiet couple of weeks. She would like a Council task—she’d like to get out of the city and stretch her legs. She wondered if Oll had any news about Grandfather Tealiff yet. Maybe she could go to Wester herself and poke around for information.

  “How will you answer Giddon when he asks you to marry him?” Po asked. “Will you accept?”

  Katsa sat up, and stared at him. “That’s an absurd question.”

  “Absurd—why?” His face was clear of its usual smiles. She didn’t think he was teasing her.

  “Why in the Middluns would Giddon ask me to marry him?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Katsa. You’re not serious.”

  She looked at him blankly, and now he did begin to smile.

  “Katsa, don’t you know Giddon’s in love with you?”

  Katsa snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Giddon lives to criticize me.”

  Po shook his head, and his laugh began to rumble from his chest. “Katsa, how can you be so blind? He’s completely smitten. Don’t you see how jealous he is? Don’t you remember how he reacted when I scratched your face?”

  An unpleasant feeling began to gather in her stomach. “I don’t see what that has to do with it. And besides, how would you know? I don’t believe Lord Giddon confides in you.”

  He laughed. “No,” he said. “No, he certainly doesn’t. Giddon trusts me about as much as he trusts Murgon. I imagine he thinks any man who fights you as I do is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug.”

  “You’re deceived,” Katsa said. “Giddon feels nothing for me.”

  “I can’t make you see it, Katsa, if you’re determined not to see it.” Po stretched onto his back and yawned. “All the same, I might think up a response if I were you. Just in case he were to propose.” He laughed again. “I’ll have to ice my shoulder, as usual. I’d say you won again today, Katsa.”