Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(48)
Author: Kristin Cashore

The woman came bustling back into the room and set a platter of bread and cheese on the table. A girl about Katsa’s age followed with mugs and a pitcher. A boy, a young man tal er even than Raffin, brought up the rear, and lit the torches in the walls around the table. Katsa heard a soft sigh and glanced at Bitterblue. The child stared, wide-eyed and mouth watering, at the bread and cheese on the table before her. She caught Katsa’s eye. “Bread,” she whispered, and Katsa couldn’t help smiling.

“Eat, child,” Katsa said.

“By all means, young miss,” the woman said. “Eat as much as you like.”

Katsa waited until everyone was seated, and until Bitterblue was contentedly stuffing her mouth with bread. Then she spoke.

“We need information,” she said. “We need counsel. We need baths and any clothing – preferably boy’s clothing – you might be able to spare. Above all, we need utter secrecy regarding our presence in this town.”

“We’re at your service, My Lady,” the storekeeper said.

“We’ve enough clothing in this house to dress an army,” his wife said. “And any supplies you’l need in the store.

And a horse, I warrant, if you’re wanting one. You can be sure we’l keep quiet, My Lady. We know what you’ve done with your Council and well do for you whatever we can.”

“We thank you.”

“What information do you seek, My Lady?” the storekeeper asked. “We’ve heard very little from any of the kingdoms.”

Katsa’s eyes rested on Bitterblue, who tore into the bread and cheese like a wild thing. “Slowly, child,” she said, absently. She rubbed her head and considered how much to tell this Sunderan family. Some things they needed to know, and certainly the one thing most likely to combat the influence of whatever deception Leck spread next was the truth.

“We come from Monsea,” Katsa said. “We crossed the mountains through Grel a’s Pass.”

This was met with silence, and a widening of eyes. Katsa sighed.

“If that’s hard for you to believe,” she said, “you’l find the rest of our story no less than incredible. Truly, I’m unsure where to start.”

“Start with Leck’s Grace,” Bitterblue said around her mouthful of bread.

Katsa watched the child lick crumbs from her fingers. Bitterblue looked as if she were approaching a state of rapture that even the story of her father’s treachery couldn’t disturb. “Very well,” Katsa said. “We’l start with Leck’s Grace.”

———

Katsa took not one bath that night, but two. The first to loosen the dirt and peel off the top layer of grime, the second to become truly clean.

Bitterblue did the same. The storekeeper, his wife, and his two eldest children moved quietly and efficiently, drawing water, heating water, emptying the tub, and burning their old, tattered garments.

Producing new clothing, boy’s clothing, and fitting it to their guests. Gathering hats, coats, scarves, and gloves from their own cabinets and from the store. Cutting Bitterblue’s hair to the length of a boy’s, and trimming Katsa’s so it lay close to her scalp again.

The sensation of cleanliness was astonishing. Katsa couldn’t count the number of times she heard Bitterblue’s quiet sigh. A sigh at being warm and clean, at washing oneself with soap; and at the taste of bread in one’s mouth, and the feeling of bread in one’s stomach.

“I’m afraid we won’t get much sleep tonight, child,” Katsa said. “We must leave this house before the rest of the family wakes in the morning.”

“And you think that bothers me? This evening has been bliss. The lack of sleep will be nothing.”

Nonetheless, when Katsa and Bitterblue lay down in a bed for the first time in a very long time – the bed of the storekeeper and his wife, though Katsa had protested their sacrifice – Bitterblue dropped into an exhausted sleep. Katsa lay on her back and tried not to let the calm breath of her bed companion, the softness of mattress and pill ow delude her into believing they were safe. She thought of the gaps she’d left in the story she’d told that night.

The family of the storekeeper now understood the horror that was King Leck’s Grace. They understood Ashen’s murder and the events surrounding the kidnapping of Grandfather Tealiff. They’d surmised, though Katsa had never told them explicitly, that the child eating bread and cheese as if she’d never seen it before was the Monsean princess who fled her father. They even understood that if Leck chose to spread a false story through Sunder, their minds might lose the truth of everything she’d told them. all of this the family marveled at, accepted, and understood.

Katsa had omitted one truth, and she had told one lie. The truth omitted was their destination. Leck might be able to confuse this family into admitting the lady and the princess had knocked on their door and slept under their roof. But he’d never be able to talk them into revealing a destination they didn’t know.

The lie told was that the Lienid prince was dead, killed by Leck’s guards when he’d tried to murder the Monsean king. Katsa supposed this lie was a waste of her breath. The opportunity for the family to speak of it would never arise.

But when she could, she would make Po out to be dead. The more people who thought him dead, the fewer people would think to seek him out and do him harm.

To the Sunderan port cities they must now go. Ride south to sail west. But her thoughts as she lay beside the sleeping princess tended east, to a cabin beside a waterfal ; and north, to a workroom in a castle and a figure bent over a book, a beaker, or a fire.

How she wished she could take Bitterblue north to Randa City and hide her there as they’d hidden her grandfather.

North to Raffin’s comfort, Raffin’s patience and care. But even ignoring the complications of her own status at Randa’s court, it was impossible. Unthinkable to hide the child in such an obvious place, and so close to Leck’s dominion; unthinkable to take this crisis to those Katsa held most dear. She would not entangle Raffin with a man who took away all reason, and warped intention. She would not lead Leck to her friends.

She would not involve her friends at all.

She and the child would start tomorrow. They would ride the horse into the ground. They would find passage to Lienid, and she would hide the child; and then she would think.

She closed her eyes and ordered herself to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Katsa’s first view of the sea was like her first view of the mountains, though mountains and sea were nothing like each other. The mountains were silent, and the sea was rushing noise, calm, and rushing noise again. The mountains were high, and the sea was flatness reaching so far into the distance she was surprised she couldn’t see the lights of some faraway land twinkling back at her. They were nothing alike. But she couldn’t stop staring at the sea, or breathing in the sea air, and thus had the mountains affected her.

The cloth tied over her green eye limited her view. Katsa itched to tear it off, but she dared not, when they’d made it this far, first through the outskirts of this city and finally through the city streets themselves. They’d moved only at night, and no one had recognized them. Which was the same as saying she hadn’t had to kill anyone. A scuffle here and there, when thugs on a dark street had grown a little too curious about the two boys slipping southward toward the water at midnight. But never recognition, and never more trouble than Katsa could handle without arousing suspicion.

This was Suncliff, the largest of the Sunderan port cities and the one with the heaviest traffic in trade. A city that by night struck Katsa as run- down and grim, crowded with narrow, seedy streets that seemed as if they should lead to a prison or a slum, and not to this astonishing expanse of water. Water stretching out, fil ing her, erasing any consciousness of the drunkards and thieves, the broken buildings and streets at her back.

“How will we find a Lienid ship?” Bitterblue asked.

“Not just a Lienid ship,” Katsa said. “A Lienid ship that hasn’t recently been to Monsea.”

“I could check around,” Bitterblue said, “while you hide.”

“Absolutely not. Even if you weren’t who you are, this place would be unsafe. Even if it weren’t night. Even if you weren’t so small.”

Bitterblue wrapped her arms tightly around herself and turned her back to the wind. “I envy you your Grace.”

“Let’s go,” Katsa said. “We must find a ship tonight, or we spend tomorrow hiding under the noses of thousands of people.”

Katsa pulled the girl into the protection of her arm. They worked their way across the rocks to the streets and stairways that led down to the docks.

———

The docks were eerie at night. The ships were black bodies as big as castles rising out of the sea, skeleton masts and flapping sails, with voices of invisible men echoing down from the riggings.

Each ship was its own little kingdom, with its own guards who stood, swords drawn, before the gangplank, and its own sailors who came and went from deck to dock or gathered around small fires on shore. Two boys moving among the ships, bundled against the cold and carrying a couple of worn bags, were far from noteworthy in this setting. They were runaways, or paupers, looking for work or passage.

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’l 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 will ingly, 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 small er 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.