Graceling skt-1 Read online

  "Don't you have anything to say, Lady? Surely you don't think I'll let you pass without an explanation?" There was something playful in his voice.

  She watched him, quietly. He stretched his arms in one fluid motion, and her eyes unraveled the bands of gold that gleamed on his fingers. It was enough. The hoops in his ears, the rings, the lilt in his words – it was enough. "You're a Lienid," she said.

  "You have good eyesight," he said.

  "Not good enough to see the colors of your eyes."

  He laughed. "I think I know the colors of yours."

  Common sense told her to kill him. "You're one to speak of being far from home," she said. "What's a Lienid doing in the court of King Murgon?"

  "I'll tell you my reasons if you'll tell me yours."

  "I'll tell you nothing, and you must let me pass."

  "Must I?"

  "If you don't, I'll have to force you."

  "Do you think you can?"

  She faked to her right, and he swung away, easily. She did it again, faster. Again, he escaped her easily. He was very good. But she was Katsa.

  "I know I can," she said.

  "Ah." His voice was amused. "But it might take you hours."

  Why was he playing with her? Why wasn't he raising the alarm? Perhaps he was a criminal himself, a Graceling criminal. And if so, did that make him an ally or an enemy? Wouldn't a Lienid approve of her rescue of the Lienid prisoner? Yes – unless he was a traitor. Or unless this Lienid didn't even know the contents of Murgon's dungeons – Murgon had kept the secret well.

  The Council would tell her to kill him. The Council would tell her she put them at risk if she left a man alive who knew her identity. But he was unlike any thug she'd ever encountered. He didn't feel brutish or stupid or threatening.

  She couldn't kill one Lienid while rescuing another.

  She was a fool and she would probably regret it, but she wouldn't do it.

  "I trust you," he said, suddenly. He stepped out of her path and waved her forward. She thought him very strange, and impulsive, but she saw he'd relaxed his guard, and she wasn't one to waste an opportunity. In an instant she swung her boot up and clipped him on the forehead. His eyes opened wide with surprise, and he dropped to the ground.

  "Maybe I didn't have to do that." She stretched him out, his sleeping limbs heavy. "But I don't know what to think of you, and I've risked enough already, letting you live." She dug the pills out of her sleeve, dropped one into his mouth. She turned his face to the torchlight. He was younger than she'd thought, not much older than she, nineteen or twenty at most. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead, past his ear. The neck of his shirt was open, and the torchlight played along the line of his collarbone.

  What a strange character. Maybe Raffin would know who he was.

  She shook herself. They would be waiting.

  She ran.

  ———

  They rode hard. They tied the old man to his horse, for he was too weak to hold himself up. They stopped only once, to wrap him in more blankets.

  Katsa was impatient to keep moving. "Doesn't he know it's midsummer?"

  "He's frozen through, My Lady," Oll said. "He's shivering, he's ill. It's no use if our rescue kills him."

  They talked about stopping, building a fire, but there was no time. They had to reach Randa City before daybreak or they would be discovered.

  Perhaps I should have killed him, she thought as they thundered through dark forests. Perhaps I should have killed him. He knew who I was.

  But he hadn't seemed threatening or suspicious. He'd been more curious than anything. He'd trusted her.

  Then again, he hadn't known about the trail of drugged guards she'd left in her wake. And he wouldn't trust her once he woke to that welt on his head.

  If he told King Murgon of their encounter, and if Murgon told King Randa, things could get very tricky for the Lady Katsa. Randa knew nothing of the Lienid prisoner, much less of Katsa moonlighting as rescuer.

  Katsa shook herself in frustration. These thoughts were no help, and it was done now. They needed to get the grandfather to safety and warmth, and Raffin. She crouched lower in her saddle and urged her horse north.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a land of seven kingdoms. Seven kingdoms, and seven thoroughly unpredictable kings. Why in the name of all that was reasonable would anyone kidnap Prince Tealiff, the father of the Lienid king? He was an old man. He had no power; he had no ambition; he wasn't even well. Word was, he spent most of his days sitting by the fire, or in the sun, looking out at the sea, playing with his great-grandchildren, and bothering no one.

  The Lienid people didn't have enemies. They shipped their gold to whoever had the goods to trade for it; they grew their own fruit and bred their own game; they kept to themselves on their island, an ocean removed from the other six kingdoms. They were different. They had a distinctive dark-haired look and distinctive customs, and they liked their isolation. King Ror of Lienid was the least troublesome of the seven kings. He made no treaties with the others, but he made no war, and he ruled his own people fairly.

  That the Council's network of spies had traced King Ror's father to King Murgon's dungeons in Sunder answered nothing. Murgon tended not to create trouble among the kingdoms, but often enough he was a party to the trouble, the agent of another man's crime as long as the money was good.

  Without a doubt, someone had paid him to hold the Lienid grandfather. The question was, who?

  Katsa's uncle, Randa, King of the Middluns, was not involved in this particular trouble. The Council could be certain of this, for Oll was Randa's spymaster and his confidant. Thanks to Oll, the Council knew everything there was to know about Randa.

  In truth, Randa usually took care not to involve himself with the other kingdoms. His kingdom sat between Estill and Wester on one axis and between Nander and Sunder on the other. It was a position too tenuous for alliances.

  The kings of Wester, Nander, and Estill – they were the source of most of the trouble. They were cast from the same hotheaded mold, all ambitious, all envious. All thoughtless and heartless and inconstant. King Birn of Wester and King Drowden of Nander might form an alliance and pummel Estill's army on the northern borders, but Wester and Nander could never work together for long. Suddenly one would offend the other, and Wester and Nander would become enemies again, and Estill would join Nander to pound Wester.

  And the kings were no better to their own people than they were to each other's. Katsa remembered the farmers of Estill that she and Oll had lifted secretly from their makeshift prison in a cowshed weeks before. Estillan farmers who could not pay the tithe to their king, Thigpen, because Thigpen's army had trampled their fields on its way to raid a Nanderan village. Thigpen should have been the one to pay the farmers; even Randa would have conceded this, had his own army done the damage. But Thigpen intended to hang the farmers for nonpayment of the tithe. Yes, Birn, Drowden, and Thigpen kept the Council busy.

  It had not always been like this. Wester, Nander, Estill, Sunder, and the Middluns – the five inner kingdoms – had once known how to coexist peacefully. Centuries back they had all been of the same family, ruled by three brothers and two sisters who had managed to negotiate their jealousies without resorting to war. But any acknowledgment of that old family bond was long gone now. The kingdoms' people were at the mercy of the natures of those who rose to be their rulers. It was a gamble, and the current generation did not make for a winning hand.

  The seventh kingdom was Monsea. The mountains set Monsea apart from the others, as the ocean did for Lienid. Leck, King of Monsea, was married to Ashen, the sister of King Ror of Lienid. Leck and Ror shared a dislike for the squabbles of the other kingdoms. But this didn't forge an alliance, for Monsea and Lienid were too far removed from each other, too independent, too uninterested in the doings of the other kingdoms.

  Not much was known about the Monsean court. King Leck was well liked by his people and had a great reputation for
kindness to children, animals, and all helpless creatures. The Monsean queen was a gentle woman. Word was she'd stopped eating the day she'd heard of the Lienid grandfather's disappearance. For of course, the father of the Lienid king was her father as well.

  It had to be Wester or Nander or Estill who had kidnapped the Lienid grandfather. Katsa could think of no other possibility, unless Lienid itself was involved. A notion that might seem ridiculous, if it hadn't been for the Lienid man in Murgon's courtyard. His jewelry had been rich: He was a noble of some sort. And any guest of Murgon's warranted suspicion.

  But Katsa didn't feel he was involved. She couldn't explain it, but it was what she felt.

  Why had Grandfather Tealiff been stolen? What conceivable importance could he have?

  ———

  They reached Randa City before the sun did, but only just. When the horses' hooves clattered onto the stones of city roads, they slowed their pace. Some in the city were already awake. They couldn't tear through the narrow streets; they couldn't make themselves conspicuous.

  The horses carried them past wooden shacks and houses, stone foundries, shops with their shutters closed. The buildings were neat, and most of them had recently been painted. There was no squalor in Randa City. Randa didn't tolerate squalor.

  When the streets began to rise, Katsa dismounted. She passed her reins to Giddon and took the reins of Tealiff's horse. Giddon and Oll turned down a street that led east to the forest, leading Katsa's horse behind them. This was the arrangement. A grandfather on horseback and a boy at his side climbing to the castle were less likely to be noticed than four horses and four riders. Oll and Giddon would ride out of the city and wait for her in the trees. Katsa would deliver Teal if to Prince Raffin through a high doorway in a defunct section of the castle wall, the existence of which Oll kept carefully from Randa's notice.

  Katsa pulled the old man's blankets more firmly around his head. It was still fairly dark, but if she could see the hoops in his ears, then others would be able to see them as well. He lay on the horse, a huddled shape, whether asleep or unconscious she did not know. If he was unconscious, then she couldn't think how they were going to manage the last leg of the journey, up a crumbling staircase in Randa's wall where the horse couldn't go. She touched his face. He shifted and began to shiver again.

  "You must wake, Lord Prince," she said. "I can't carry you up the steps to the castle."

  The gray light reflected in his eyes as they opened, and his voice shook with coldness. "Where am I?"

  "This is Randa City, in the Middluns," she said. "We're almost to safety."

  "I didn't think Randa the type to conduct rescue missions."

  She hadn't expected him to be so lucid. "He isn't."

  "Humph. Well, I'm awake. You'll not have to carry me. The Lady Katsa, is it?"

  "Yes, Lord Prince."

  "I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky."

  "Yes, Lord Prince."

  "I've heard you could kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger."

  She smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince."

  "Does it make it easier?"

  She squinted at his form hunched in the saddle. "I don't understand you."

  "To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?"

  She laughed. "No, Lord Prince. I'd happily do without both."

  "I suppose I owe you my gratitude," he said, and then settled into silence.

  She wanted to ask, For what? From what have we rescued you? But he was ill and tired, and he seemed asleep again. She didn't want to pester him. She liked this Lienid grandfather. There weren't many people who wanted to talk about her Grace.

  They climbed past shadowed roofs and doorways. She was beginning to feel her sleepless night, and she would not rest again for hours. She replayed the grandfather's words in her mind. His accent was like the man's, the Lienid man's in the courtyard.

  ———

  In the end, she did carry him, for when the time came she couldn't wake him up. She passed the horse's reins to a child crouched beside the wall, a girl whose father was a friend of the Council. Katsa tipped the old man over her shoulder and staggered, one step at a time, up the rubble of the broken stairway. The final stretch was practically vertical. Only the threat of the lightening sky kept her going; she'd never imagined that a man who looked like he was made of dust could be so heavy.

  She had no breath to produce the low whistle that was to be her signal to Raffin, but it didn't matter. He heard her approach.

  "The whole city has likely heard your approach," he whispered. "Honestly, Kat, I wouldn't have expected you to be capable of such a racket." He bent down and eased her load onto his own thin shoulders. She leaned against the wall and caught her breath.

  "My Grace doesn't give me the strength of a giant," she said. "You Ungraced don't understand. You think if we have one Grace, we have them all."

  "I've tasted your cakes, and I remember the needlework you used to do. I've no question a good number of Graces have passed you over." He laughed down at her in the gray light, and she smiled back. "It went as planned?"

  She thought of the Lienid in the courtyard. "Yes, for the most."

  "Go now," he said, "and safely. I'll take care of this one."

  He turned and crept inside with his living bundle. She raced down the broken steps and slipped onto a pathway leading east. She pulled her hood low, and ran toward the pink sky.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Katsa ran past houses and work shacks, shops and inns. The city was waking, and the streets smelled of baking bread. She ran past the milkman, half asleep on his cart, his horse sighing before him.

  She felt light without her burden, and the road sloped downward. She ran quietly and fast into the eastern fields and kept running. A woman carried buckets across a farmyard, the handles hanging from a yoke balanced on her shoulder.

  When the trees began, Katsa slowed. She had to move carefully now, lest she break branches or leave boot prints and create a trail straight to the meeting place. Already the way looked a bit traveled. Oll and Giddon and the others on the Council were never as careful as she, and of course the horses couldn't help creating a path. They would need a new meeting place soon.

  By the time she broke into the thicket that was their hideout, it was daylight. The horses grazed. Giddon lay on the ground. Oll leaned against a pile of saddlebags. Both men were asleep.

  Katsa choked down her annoyance and passed to the horses. She greeted the animals and lifted their hooves, one by one, to check for cracks and gravel. They'd done well, the horses, and at least they knew better than to fall asleep in the forest, so close to the city and such a great distance from where Randa supposed them to be. Her own mount whickered, and Oll stirred behind her.

  "And if someone had discovered you," she said, "sleeping at the edge of the forest when you were supposed to be halfway to the eastern border?" She spoke into her saddle and scratched her horse's shoulder. "What explanation would you have given?"

  "I didn't mean to sleep, My Lady," Oll replied.

  "That's no comfort."

  "We don't all have your stamina, My Lady, especially those of us with gray hair. Come now, no harm was done." He shook Giddon, who responded by covering his eyes with his hands. "Wake up, My Lord. We'd best be moving."

  Katsa said nothing. She hung her saddlebags and waited by the horses. Oll brought the remaining saddlebags and fastened them in place. "Prince Tealiff is safe, My Lady?"

  "He's safe."

  Giddon stumbled over, scratching his brown beard. He unwrapped a loaf of bread and held it out to her, but she shook her head. "I'll eat later," she said.

  Giddon broke off a piece and handed the loaf to Oll. "Are you angry that we weren't performing strength exercises when you arrived, Katsa? Should we have been doing gymnastics in the treetops?"

  "You could've been caught, Giddon. You could've been seen,
and then where would you be?"

  "You would've thought of some story," Giddon said. "You would've saved us, like you do everyone else." He smiled, his warm eyes lighting up a face that was confident and handsome but that failed to please Katsa at the moment. Giddon was younger even than Raffin, strong, and a good rider. He had no excuse for sleeping.

  "Come, My Lord," Oll said. "Let's eat our bread in the saddle. Otherwise our lady will leave without us."

  She knew they teased her. She knew they thought her too critical. But she also knew she wouldn't have allowed herself to sleep when it was unsafe to do so.

  Then again, they would never have allowed the Graceling Lienid to live. If they knew, they'd be furious, and she wouldn't be able to offer any rational excuse.

  They wound their way to one of the forest paths that paralleled the main road and set out eastward. They pulled their hoods low and pushed the horses hard. After a few minutes, the pounding of hooves surrounding her, Katsa's irritation diminished. She couldn't be worried for long when she was moving.

  ———

  The forests of the southern Middluns gave way to hills, low hills at first that would grow as they neared Estill. They stopped only once, at midday, to change their horses at a secluded inn that had offered its services to the Council.

  With fresh horses they made good time, and by nightfall they approached the Estillan border. With an early start they could reach the Estillan estate that was their destination by midmorning, do their business for Randa, and then turn back. They could travel at a reasonable pace and still return to Randa City before nightfall of the following day, which was when they were expected. And then Katsa would know whether Prince Raffin had learned anything from the Lienid grandfather.

  They made camp against an enormous rock crag that broke through the base of one of the eastern hills. There was a chill to the night, but they decided against a fire. Mischief hid in the hills along the Estillan border, and though they were safe with two sworded men and Katsa, there was no reason to attract trouble. They ate a supper of bread, cheese, and water from their flasks, and then they climbed into their bedrolls.