Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  A familiar lilt in the conversation of one group of guards caught Katsa’s ear. Bitterblue turned to her, eyebrows raised. “I hear it,” Katsa said. “We’ll keep walking, but remember that ship.”

  “Why not speak to them?”

  “There are four of them, and there are too many others nearby. If there’s trouble I’ll never be able to keep it quiet.”

  Katsa wished suddenly for Po, for his Grace, so they might know if they were recognized, and if it mattered. If Po were here, he would know with a single question whether those Lienid guards were safe.

  Of course, if Po were here their difficulty of disguise would be multiplied manyfold; between his eyes and the rings in his ears, and his accent, and even his manner of carrying himself, he would need to wear a sack over his head to avoid drawing attention. But perhaps the Lienid sailors would do anything their prince wished, despite what they’d heard? She felt his ring lying cold against the skin of her breast, the ring with the engravings that matched his arms. This ring was their ticket if any Lienid ship was to serve them willingly, and not in response to the threat of her Grace or the weight of her purse. Though she would capitulate to her Grace or her purse if necessary.

  They slipped past a group of smaller ships whose guards seemed to be involved in some kind of boasting match between them. One group Westeran and another—

  “Monsean,” Bitterblue whispered, and though Katsa didn’t change her gait, her senses sharpened and her whole body tingled with readiness until they’d left those ships behind and several more beyond them. They continued on, blending into the darkness.

  THE SAILOR sat alone at the edge of a wooden walkway, his feet dangling over the water. The dock on which he sat led to a ship in an unusual state of activity, the deck swarming with men and boys. Lienid men and boys, for in ears and on fingers, in the light of their lanterns, Katsa caught flashes of gold. She knew nothing of ships, but she thought this one must either have just arrived or just be departing.

  “Do ships set out in the dead of night?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” Bitterblue said.

  “Quickly. If it’s on its way out, all the better.” And if that lone sailor gave them trouble, she could drop him into the water and trust the men rushing across the deck of the ship above not to notice his absence.

  Katsa slipped up onto the walkway, Bitterblue close behind. The man perceived them immediately. His hand went to his belt.

  “Easy, sailor,” Katsa said, her voice low. “We’ve only a few questions.”

  The man said nothing, and kept his hand at his belt, but he allowed the two figures to approach. As Katsa sat beside him, he shifted and leaned away—for better leverage, she knew, in case he decided to use his knife. Bitterblue sat next to Katsa, hidden from the man by Katsa’s body. Katsa thanked the Middluns for the darkness and their heavy coats, which hid her face and her form from this fellow.

  “Where does your ship come from last, sailor?” Katsa asked.

  “From Ror City,” he answered in a voice little deeper than hers, and Katsa knew him to be not a man but a boy—broad and solid, but younger than she.

  “You depart tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where do you go?”

  “To Sunport and South Bay, Westport, and Ror City again.”

  “Not to Monport?”

  “We have no trade with Monsea this time around.”

  “Have you any news of Monsea?”

  “It’s clear enough we’re a Lienid ship, isn’t it? Find a Monsean ship if it’s Monsean news you’re wanting.”

  “What kind of man is your captain,” Katsa asked, “and what do you carry?”

  “This is a good many questions,” the boy said. “You want news of Monsea and news of our captain. You want where we’ve been and what we’re carrying. Is Murgon employing children to be his spies, then?”

  “I’ve no idea who Murgon employs to be his spies. We seek passage,” Katsa said, “west.”

  “You’re out of luck,” the boy said. “We don’t need extra hands, and you don’t look the type to pay.”

  “Oh? Graced with night vision, are you?”

  “I can see you well enough to know you for a pair of ragamuffins,” the boy said, “who’ve been fighting, by the looks of that bandage on your eye.”

  “We can pay.”

  The boy hesitated. “Either you’re lying, or you’re thieves. I’d wager both are true.”

  “We’re neither.” Katsa reached for the purse in the pocket of her coat. The boy unsheathed his knife and jumped to his feet.

  “Hold, sailor. I only reach for my purse,” Katsa said. “You may take it from my pocket yourself, if you wish. Go on,” she said, as he hesitated. “I’ll keep my hands in the air and my friend will stand away.”

  Bitterblue stood and backed up a few steps, obligingly. Katsa stood, her arms raised away from her body. The boy paused, and then reached toward her pocket. As one hand fiddled to uncover the purse, the other held the knife just below Katsa’s throat. She thought she ought to appear nervous. Yet another reason to be grateful for the darkness that made her face unreadable.

  Her purse finally in hand, the boy backed up a step or two. He opened it and shook a few gold pieces into his palm. He inspected the coins in the moonlight, and then in the firelight glimmering dimly from shore.

  “This is Lienid gold,” he said. “Not only are you thieves, but you’re thieves who’ve stolen from Lienid men.”

  “Take us to your captain and let him decide whether to accept our gold. If you do so, a piece of it’s yours—regardless of what he chooses.”

  The boy considered the offer, and Katsa waited. Truly, it didn’t matter if he agreed to their terms or not, for they wouldn’t find a ship better suited to their purposes than this one. Katsa would get them aboard one way or another, even if she had to clunk this boy on the head and drag him up the gangplank, waving Po’s ring before the noses of the guards.

  “All right,” the boy said. He chose a coin from the pile in his palm and tucked it inside his coat. “I’ll take you to Captain Faun for a piece of gold. But I warrant you’ll find yourself thrown into the brig for thievery. She won’t believe you came upon this honestly, and we don’t have time to report you to the authorities in the city.”

  The word had not escaped Katsa’s attention. “She? Your captain is a woman?”

  “A woman,” the boy said, “and Graced.”

  A woman and Graced. Katsa didn’t know which should surprise her more. “Is this a ship of the king, then?”

  “It’s her ship.”

  “How—”

  “The Graced in Lienid are free. The king doesn’t own them.”

  Yes, she remembered that Po had explained this. “Are you coming,” the boy said, “or are we going to stand here conversing?”

  “What’s her Grace?”

  The boy stepped aside and waved them forward with his knife. “Go on,” he said. And so Katsa and Bitterblue moved up the dock, but Katsa listened for his answer. If this captain was a mind reader, or even a very competent fighter, she wanted to know before they reached the guards so she could decide whether to continue forward or shove this boy into the water and run.

  Ahead of them, the guards spoke to each other and laughed at some joke. One of them held a torch. The flame strained against the wind and flashed across their rough faces, their broad chests, their unsheathed swords. Bitterblue gasped, ever so slightly, and Katsa shifted her attention to the child. Bitterblue was frightened. Katsa laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “It’ll be a swimming Grace,” she said idly to the boy behind them, “or some navigational ability. Am I right?”

  “Her Grace is the reason we leave in the middle of the night,” the boy said. “She sees storms before they hit. We set out now to beat a blizzard coming up from the east.”

  A weather seer. The prescient Graces were better than the mind-reading Graces, better by far
, but still they gave Katsa a crawling feeling along her skin. Well, this captain’s profession was well suited to her Grace, anyway, and it wasn’t adverse to their purposes—might even be advantageous. Katsa would meet this Captain Faun and measure her, then decide how much to tell her.

  The guards stared at them as they approached. One held the torch to their faces. Katsa ducked her chin into the neck of her coat and stared back at him with her single visible eye. “What’s this you’re bringing aboard, Jem?” the man asked.

  “They go to the captain,” the boy said.

  “Prisoners?”

  “Prisoners or passengers. The captain will decide.”

  The guard gestured to one of his companions. “Go with them, Bear,” he said, “and make sure no danger befalls our young Jem.”

  “I can handle myself,” Jem said.

  “Of course you can. But Bear can handle yourself, too, and himself, and your two prisoners, and carry a sword, and hold a light—all at the same time. And keep our captain safe.”

  Jem might have been about to protest, but at the mention of the captain he nodded. He took the lead as Katsa and Bitterblue climbed up the gangplank. Bear fell in behind them, his sword swinging in one hand and a lantern raised in the other. He was one of the largest men Katsa had ever seen. As they stepped onto the deck of the ship, sailors moved aside, partly to stare at the two small and bedraggled strangers and partly to get out of Bear’s way. “What’s this, Jem?” voices asked. “We go to the captain,” Jem responded, over and over, and the men fell away and went back to their duties.

  The deck was long, and it was crowded with jostling men and with unfamiliar shapes that loomed to all sides of them and cast strange shadows against the light of Bear’s lantern. A sail billowed down suddenly, released from its confinement in the riggings. It flapped over Katsa’s head, glowing a luminous gray, looking very much like an enormous bird trying to break its leash and take off into the sky; and then it rose again just as suddenly, folded and strapped back into place. Katsa had no idea what it all meant, all this activity, but felt a kind of excitement at the strangeness and the rush, the voices shouting commands she didn’t recognize, the gusting wind, the pitching floor.

  It took her about two steps to adjust to the tilt and roll of the deck. Bitterblue was not so comfortable, and her balance wasn’t helped by her constant alarm at the happenings around her. Katsa finally took hold of the girl and held her close against her side. Bitterblue leaned into her, relieved, and relinquished to Katsa the job of keeping her upright.

  Jem stopped at an opening in the deck floor. “Follow me,” he said. He clamped his knife between his teeth, stepped into the blackness of the opening, and disappeared. Katsa followed, trusting the ladder she couldn’t see to materialize beneath her hands and feet, pausing to help the child onto the rungs just above her. Bear climbed down last, his light casting their shadows against the walls of the narrow corridor in which they finally stood.

  They followed Jem’s dark form down a hallway. Bitterblue leaned against Katsa and turned her face against Katsa’s breast. Yes, the air was stuffy down here, and stale and unpleasant. Katsa had heard that people got used to ships. Until Bitterblue got used to it, Katsa would keep her standing and breathing.

  Jem led them past black doorways, toward a rectangle of orange light that Katsa guessed opened to the quarters of the Graced captain. The woman captain. Voices emanated from the lighted opening, and one of them was strong, commanding, and female.

  When they reached the doorway the conversation stopped. From her place in the shadows behind the boy, Katsa heard the woman’s voice.

  “What is it, Jem?”

  “Begging your pardon, Captain,” Jem said. “These two Sunderan boys wish to buy passage west, but I don’t trust their gold.”

  “And what’s wrong with their gold?” the voice asked.

  “It’s Lienid gold, Captain, and more of it than it seems to me they should have.”

  “Bring them in,” the voice said, “and let me see this gold.”

  They followed Jem into a well-lit room that reminded Katsa of one of Raffin’s workrooms, always cluttered with open books, bottles of oddly colored liquids, herbs drying from hooks, and strange experiments Katsa didn’t understand. Except here, the books were replaced by maps and charts, the bottles by instruments of copper and gold Katsa didn’t recognize, the herbs by ropes, cords, hooks, nets—items Katsa knew belonged on ships but didn’t know the purpose of any more than she knew the purpose of Raffin’s experiments. A narrow bed stood in one corner, a chest at its foot. This, too, was like Raffin’s workrooms, for sometimes he slept there, in a bed he’d installed for those nights when his mind was more on his work than his comfort.

  The captain stood before a table, a sailor almost as big as Bear at her side, a map spread out before them. She was a woman past childbearing years, her hair steel gray and pulled tightly into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her clothing like that of the other sailors: brown trousers, brown coat, heavy boots, and a knife at her belt. Her left eye pale gray, and her right a blue as brilliant as Katsa’s blue eye. Her face stern, and her gaze, as she turned to the two strangers, quick and piercing. Katsa felt for the first time, in this bright room with this woman’s bright eyes flashing over them, that their disguises had come to the end of their usefulness.

  Jem dropped Katsa’s coins into the captain’s outstretched hand. “There’s plenty more of it, too, Captain, in this purse.”

  The captain considered the gold in her hand. She raised narrowed eyes to Katsa and Bitterblue. “Where did you get this?”

  “We’re friends of Prince Greening of Lienid,” Katsa said. “It’s his gold.”

  The big sailor beside the captain snorted. “Friends of Prince Po,” he said. “Of course they are.”

  “If you’ve stolen from our prince—” Jem began, but Captain Faun held up a hand. She looked at Katsa so hard that Katsa felt as if the woman’s gaze were scraping at the back of her skull. She looked at Katsa’s coat, at her belt, at her trousers, her boots, and Katsa felt naked before the intelligence of those uneven eyes.

  “You expect me to believe that Prince Po gave a purse of gold to two raggedy Sunderan boys?” the captain finally asked.

  “I think you know we’re not Sunderan boys,” Katsa said, reaching into the neck of her coat. “He gave me his ring so you may know to trust us.” She pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out for the captain to see. She registered the woman’s shocked expression, and then the outraged cries of Jem and Bear alerted her to the room’s sudden descent into bedlam. They were lunging toward her, both of them, Jem brandishing his knife, Bear swinging his sword; and the sailor beside the captain had also pulled a blade.

  Po could have mentioned that at the sight of his ring his people devolved into madness; but she would act now and contemplate her annoyance later. She swirled Bitterblue into the corner so that her own body was between the child and everyone else in the room. She turned back and blocked Jem’s knife arm so hard that he cried out and dropped the blade to the floor. She knocked his feet out from under him, dodged the swing of Bear’s sword, and swung her boot up to clock Bear on the head. By the time Bear’s body had crumpled to the ground, Katsa held Jem’s own knife to Jem’s throat. Hooking her foot under Bear’s sword and kicking it up into the air, she caught it with her free hand and held it out toward the remaining sailor, who stood just out of her range, knife drawn, ready to spring. The ring still dangled from its cord, gripped in the same hand that gripped the sword, and it was the ring that held the gaze of the captain.

  “Stop,” Katsa said to the remaining sailor. “I don’t wish to harm you, and we’re not thieves.”

  “Prince Po would never give that ring to a Sunderan urchin,” Jem gasped.

  “And you do your Graceling prince little honor,” Katsa said, digging her knee into his back, “if you think a Sunderan urchin could’ve robbed him.”

  “All right,” th
e captain said. “That’s more than enough. Drop those blades, Lady, and release my man.”

  “If this other fellow comes toward me,” Katsa said, pointing the sword at the remaining sailor, “he’ll end up sleeping beside Bear.”

  “Come back, Patch,” the captain said to her man, “and lower that knife. Do it,” she said sharply, when Patch hesitated. The expression he shot at Katsa was ugly, but he obeyed.

  Katsa dropped her blades to the floor. Jem stood, rubbed his neck, and focused a scowl in her direction. Katsa thought of a few choice words she would like to say to Po. She looped his ring back around her neck.

  “What exactly have you done to Bear?” the captain asked.

  “He’ll wake soon enough.”

  “He’d better.”

  “He will.”

  “And now you’ll explain yourself,” the captain said. “The last we heard of our prince, he was in the Middluns, at the court of King Randa. Training with you, if I’m not mistaken.”

  A noise came from the corner. They turned to see Bitterblue on her knees, huddled against the wall, vomiting onto the floor. Katsa went to the girl and helped her to her feet. Bitterblue clung to her clumsily. “The floor is moving.”

  “Yes,” Katsa said. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “When? When will I get used to it?”

  “Come, child.”

  Katsa practically carried Bitterblue back to the captain. “Captain Faun,” she said, “this is Princess Bitterblue of Monsea. Po’s cousin. As you’ve guessed, I’m Katsa of the Middluns.”

  “I would also guess there’s nothing wrong with that eye,” the captain said.

  Katsa pulled the cloth away from her green eye. She looked into the face of the captain, who met her gaze coolly. She turned to Patch and Jem, who looked back at her, understanding now, eyebrows high. So familiar, in the features of their faces, their dark hair, the gold in their ears. The evenness with which they looked into her eyes.