Graceling

by Kristin Cashore

  "Think here," he said, "please. I'm so tired, Katsa. I'll fall right asleep."

  She nodded. "All right. I'll stay."

  He reached up, and wiped away a tear that sat on her cheek. She felt the touch of his fingertip in the base of her spine, and fought against it, against allowing him to know of it. He lay down. She stood and moved to a tree outside the light of their fire. She sat against it and watched Po's silhouette, waiting for him to fall asleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE NOTION of having a lover was to Katsa something like discovering a limb she'd never noticed before. An extra arm or toe. It was unfamiliar, and she poked and prodded it, as she would have prodded an alien toe unexpectedly her own.

  That the lover would be Po reduced her confusion somewhat. It was by thinking of Po, and not of the notion of a lover, that Katsa became comfortable enough to consider what it would mean to lie in his bed but not be his wife.

  It took more than the thinking of one night. They moved through the Sunderan forest, and they talked and rested and made camp as before. But their silences were perhaps a bit less easy than they had been; and Katsa broke off occasionally, to keep her own company and think in solitude. They did not practice fighting, for Katsa was shy of his touch. And he didn't press it upon her. He pressed nothing upon her, even conversation, even his gaze.

  They moved as quickly as the road allowed. But the farther they traveled, the more the road resembled a trail at best, winding through overgrown gullies and around trees the size of which Katsa had never seen. Trees with trunks as wide as the horses were long, and branches that groaned far above them. They had to duck sometimes to avoid curtains of vines hanging from the branches. The land rose as they moved east, and streams crisscrossed the forest floor.

  Their route at least provided some distraction for Po. He couldn't stop looking around, his eyes wide. "It's wild, this forest. Have you ever seen anything like this? It's gorgeous."

  Gorgeous, and full of animals fattening themselves for winter. Easy hunting, and easy finding shelter. But Katsa felt palpably that the horses were moving as slowly as her mind.

  "I think we would move faster on our feet," she said.

  "You'll miss the horses when we have to give them up."

  "And when will that be?"

  "It looks possibly ten days away on the map."

  "I'll prefer traveling by foot."

  "You never tire," Po said, "do you?"

  "I do, if I haven't slept for a long time. Or if I'm carrying something very heavy. I felt tired when I carried your grandfather up a flight of stairs."

  He glanced at her, eyebrows high. "You carried my grandfather up a flight of stairs?"

  "Yes, at Randa's castle."

  "After a day and a night of hard riding?"

  "Yes."

  His laugh burst out, but she didn't see the joke. "I had to do it, Po. If I hadn't, the mission would've failed."

  "He weighs as much as you, and half as much again."

  "Well, and I was tired by the time I got to the top. You wouldn't have been so tired."

  "I'm bigger than he is, Katsa. I'm stronger. And I would have been tired, had I spent the night on my horse."

  "I had to do it. I had no choice."

  "Your Grace is more than fighting," he said.

  She didn't respond to that, and after a moment's puzzlement, she forgot it. Her mind returned to the matter at hand. As it couldn't help but do, with Po always before her.

  WHAT WAS the difference between a husband and a lover?

  If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn't yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would not be her own; it would be Po's to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.

  If Po were her lover, would she feel captured, cornered into a sense of forever? Or would she still have the freedom that sprang from herself?

  They were lying on opposite sides of a dying fire one night when a new worry occurred to her. What if she took more from Po than she could give to him?

  "Po?"

  She heard him turn onto his side. "Yes?"

  "How will you feel if I'm forever leaving? If one day I give myself to you and the next I take myself away—with no promises to return?"

  "Katsa, a man would be a fool to try to keep you in a cage."

  "But that doesn't tell me how you'll feel, always to be subject to my whim."

  "It isn't your whim. It's the need of your heart. You forget that I'm in a unique position to understand you, Katsa. Whenever you pull away from me I'll know it's not for lack of love. Or if it is, I'll know that, too; and I'll know it's right for you to go."

  "But you're not answering my question. How will you feel?"

  There was a pause. "I don't know. I'll probably feel a lot of things. But only one of the things will be unhappiness; and unhappiness I'm willing to risk."

  Katsa stared up into the treetops. "Are you sure of that?"

  He sighed. "I'm certain."

  He was willing to risk unhappiness. And there was the crux of the matter. She couldn't know where this would lead, and to proceed was to risk all kinds of unhappiness.

  The fire gasped and died. She was frightened. For as their camp turned to darkness, she also found herself choosing risk.

  THE NEXT DAY Katsa would have given anything for a clear, straight path, for hard riding and thundering hooves to drown out all feeling. Instead the road wound back and forth, up rises and into gullies, and she didn't know how she kept herself from screaming. Nightfall led them into a hollow where water trickled into a low, still pool. Moss covered the trees and the ground. Moss hung from the vines that hung from the trees, and dripped into the pool that shone green like the floor of Randa's courtyard.

  "You seem a bit edgy," Po said. "Why don't you hunt? I'll build a fire."

  She allowed the first few animals she stumbled across to escape. She thought that if she plunged deeper into the forest and took more time, she might wear down some of her jitters. But when she returned to camp much later with a fox in hand, nothing had changed. He sat calmly before the fire, and she thought she might burst apart. She threw their meat onto the ground beside the flames. She sat on a rock and dropped her head into her hands.

  She knew what it was rattling around inside her. It was fear, plain and cold.

  She turned to him. "I understand why we shouldn't fight each other when one of us is angry. But is there harm in fighting when one of us is frightened?"

  He looked into the fire and considered her question evenly. He looked into her face. "I think it depends on what you hope to gain by fighting."

  "I think it'll calm me. I think it'll make me comfortable with—with you being near." She rubbed her forehead, sighing. "It'll return me to myself."

  He watched her. "It does seem to have that effect on you."

  "Will you fight me now, Po?"

  He watched her for a moment longer and then moved away from the fire and motioned for her to follow. She walked after him, dazed, her mind buzzing so crazily it was numb, and when they faced each other she found herself staring at him dumbly. She shook her head to clear it, but it did no good.

  "Hit me," she said.

  He paused for a fraction of a second. Then he swung at her face with one fist and she flashed her arm upward to block him. The explosion of arm on arm woke her from her stupor. She would fight him, and she would beat him. He hadn't beaten her yet, and he wouldn't beat her tonight. No matter the darkness, and no matter the whirlwind in her mind, for now that they fought, the whirlwind had vanished. Katsa's mind was clear.

  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 in
to 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 the 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 yo
ur 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.