Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(18)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Giddon’s face was dark. He opened his mouth to speak, but Katsa cut through his words. “You two are no use if you’re in prison. Raffin needs you. Wherever I may be, I will need you.”

Giddon tried to speak. “I won’t – ”

She would make him see this. She would cut through his obtuseness and make him see this. She slammed her hand on the desk so hard that papers cascaded onto the floor. “I’ll kill the king,” she said. “I’ll kill the king, unless you both agree not to support me. This is my rebel ion, and mine alone, and if you don’t agree, I swear to you on my Grace I will murder the king.”

She didn’t know if she would do it. But she knew she seemed wild enough for them to believe she would. She turned to Oll . “Say you agree.”

Ol cleared his throat. “It will be as you say, My Lady.”

She faced Giddon. “Giddon?”

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Giddon – ”

“It will be as you say,” he said, his eyes on the floor and his face red and gloomy.

Katsa turned to El is. “Lord El is, if Randa learns that Captain Oll or Lord Giddon agreed to this will ingly, I’ll know that you spoke. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill your daughters. Do you understand?”

“I understand, My Lady,” El is said. “And again, I thank you.”

Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she’d threatened him so brutal y. When you’re a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

“And now in this room, with only ourselves present,” she said, “we’l work out the details of what we’l claim happened here today.”

———

They ate dinner in Giddon’s dining room, in Giddon’s castle, just as they had the night before. Giddon had given her permission to cut his neck with her knife, and Oll had all owed her to bruise his cheekbone. She would have done it without their permission, for she knew Randa would expect evidence of a scuffle. But Oll and Giddon had seen the wisdom of it; or perhaps they’d guessed she would do it whether or not they agreed. They’d stood still, and bravely. She hadn’t enjoyed the task, but she’d caused them as little pain as her skil all owed.

There was not much conversation at dinner. Katsa broke bread, chewed, and swal owed. She stared at the fork and knife in her hands. She stared at her silver goblet.

“The Estil an lord,” she said. The men’s eyes jumped up from their plates. “The lord who took more lumber from Randa than he should have.

You remember him?”

They nodded.

“I didn’t hurt him,” she said. “That is, I knocked him unconscious. But I didn’t injure him.” She put her knife and fork down, and looked from Giddon to Oll . “I couldn’t. He more than paid for his crime in gold. I couldn’t hurt him.”

They watched her for a moment. Giddon’s eyes dropped to his plate. Oll cleared his throat. “Perhaps the Council work has put us in touch with our better natures,” he said.

Katsa picked up her knife and fork, cut into her mutton, and thought about that. She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face- to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed, green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrol able anger, a kill er that offered itself as the vessel of the king’s fury.

But then, it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebel ed against it utterly.

A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster?

Did it become something else?

Perhaps she wouldn’t recognize her own nature after all.

There were too many questions, and too few answers, at this dinner table in Giddon’s castle. She would like to be traveling with Raffin, or Po, rather than Oll and Giddon; they would have answers, of one kind or another.

She must guard against using her Grace in anger. This was where her nature’s struggle lay.

———

After dinner, she went to Giddon’s archery range, hoping the thunk of arrows into a target would calm her mind.

There, he found her.

She had wanted to be by herself. But when Giddon stepped out of the shadows, tal and quiet, she wished they were in a great hal with hundreds of people. A party even, she in a dress and horrible shoes. A dance. Any place other than alone with Giddon, where no one would stumble upon them and no one would interrupt.

“You’re shooting arrows at a target in the dark,” Giddon said.

She lowered her bow. She supposed this was one of his criticisms. “Yes,” she said, for she could think of no other response.

“Are you as good a shot in the dark as you are in the light?”

“Yes,” she said, and he smiled, which made her nervous. If he was going to be pleasant, then she feared where this was heading; she would much prefer him to be arrogant and critical, and unpleasant, if they must be alone together.

“There’s nothing you cannot do, Katsa.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

But he seemed determined not to argue. He smiled again and leaned against the wooden railing that separated her lane from the others.

“What do you think will happen at Randa’s court tomorrow?” he asked.

“Truly, I don’t know,” Katsa said. “Randa will be very angry.”

“I don’t like that you’re protecting me from his anger, Katsa. I don’t like it at all.”

“I’m sorry, Giddon, as I’m sorry for the cut on your neck. Shal we return to the castle?” She lifted the strap of the quiver over her head, and set it on the ground. He watched her, quietly, and a small panic began to stir in her chest.

“You should let me protect you,” he said.

“You can’t protect me from the king. It would be fatal to you, and a waste of your energies. Let’s go back to the castle.”

“Marry me,” he said, “and our marriage will protect you.”

Wel then, he had said it, as Po had predicted, and it hit her like one of Po’s punches to the stomach. She didn’t know where to look; she couldn’t stand still. She put her hand to her head, she put it to the railing. She will ed herself to think.

“Our marriage wouldn’t protect me,” she said. “Randa wouldn’t pardon me simply because I married.”

“But he would be more lenient,” Giddon said. “Our engagement would offer him an alternative. It would be dangerous for him to try to punish you, and he knows that. If we say we’re to be married, then he can send us away from court; he can send us here, and he’l be out of your reach, and you out of his. And there will be some pretense of good feeling between you.”

And she would be married, and to Giddon. She would be his wife, the lady of his house. She’d be charged with entertaining his wretched guests. Expected to hire and dismiss his servants, based on their skil with a pastry, or some such nonsense. Expected to bear him children, and stay at home to love them. She would go to his bed at night, Giddon’s bed, and lie with a man who considered a scratch to her face an affront to his person. A man who thought himself her protector – her protector when she could outduel him if she used a toothpick to his sword.

She breathed it away, breathed away the fury. He was a friend, and loyal to the Council. She wouldn’t speak what she thought. She would speak what Raffin had told her to speak.

“Giddon,” she said. “Surely you’ve heard I don’t intend to marry.”

“But would you refuse a suitable proposal? And you must admit, it seems a solution to your problem with the king.”

“Giddon.” He stood before her, his face even, his eyes warm. So confident. He didn’t imagine she could refuse him.

And perhaps that was forgivable, for perhaps no other woman would. “Giddon. You need a wife who will give you children. I’ve never wished children. You must marry a woman who wishes babies.”

“You’re not an unnatural woman, Katsa. You can fight as other women can’t, but you’re not so different from other women. You’l want babies.

I’m certain of it.”

She hadn’t expected to have such an immediate opportunity to practice containing her temper. For he deserved a thumping, to knock his certainty out of his head and onto the ground where it belonged. “I can’t marry you, Giddon. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s only to do with me. I won’t marry, not anyone, and I won’t bear any man children.”

He stared at her then, and his face changed. She knew that look on Giddon’s face, the sarcastic curl of his lip and the glint in his eye. He was beginning to hear her.

“I don’t think you’ve considered what you’re saying, Katsa. Do you expect ever to receive a more attractive proposal?”

“It’s nothing to do with you, Giddon. It’s only to do with me.”

“Do you imagine there are others who would form an interest in a lady kill er?”

“Giddon – ”

“You’re hoping the Lienid will ask for your hand.” He pointed at her, his face mocking. “You prefer him, for he’s a prince, and I’m only a lord.”

Katsa threw her arms in the air. “Giddon, of all the preposterous – ”

“He won’t ask you,” Giddon said, “and if he did you’d be a fool to accept. He’s about as trustworthy as Murgon.”

“Giddon, I assure you – ”

“Nor is he honorable,” Giddon said. “A man who fights you as he does is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug.”

She froze. She stared at Giddon and didn’t even see his finger jabbing in the air, his puffed-up face. Instead she saw Po, sitting on the floor of the practice room, using the exact words Giddon had just used. Before Giddon had used them. “Giddon. Have you spoken those words to Po?”

“Katsa, I’ve never even had a conversation with him when you were not present.”

“What about to anyone else? Have you spoken those words to anyone else?”

“Of course not. If you think I waste my time – ”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, I’m certain. What does it matter? If he asked me, I would not be afraid to tell him what I think.”

She stared at Giddon, disbelieving, defenseless against the realization that trickled into her mind and clicked into place. She put her hand to her throat. She couldn’t catch her breath. She asked the question she felt she had to ask, and cringed against the answer she knew she would receive.