Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(53)
Author: Kristin Cashore

This time she looked at him with true surprise. He watched the passing trees, his face grave.

“Captain Faun told me,” he said. “She’s told a few of us – a very few. She wants a number of us on her side when the time comes to tell the rest.”

“And are you on her side, then?” Katsa asked.

“She brought me to her side, eventual y.”

“I’m glad,” Katsa said. “And I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your doing, Lady Princess. It’s the doing of the monster who’s the King of Monsea.”

A light snow began to fall. Katsa reached her hands out to meet it.

“What do you think is wrong with him, Lady Princess?” Patch asked.

Katsa caught a snowflake in the middle of her palm. “What do you mean, wrong with him?”

“Wel , why does it pleasure him to hurt people?” Katsa shrugged. “His Grace makes it so easy.”

“But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people,” Patch said. “It doesn’t mean they do.”

“I don’t know,” Katsa said, thinking of Randa and Murgon and the other kings and their senseless acts. “It seems to me that a fair number of people are happy to be as cruel as their power all ows, and no one’s more powerful than Leck. I don’t know why he does it, I only know we need to stop him.”

“Do you think Leck knows where you are, Lady Princess?”

Katsa watched flakes melting into the sea. She sighed.

“We crossed paths with very few people,” she said, “once we left Monsea. And we told no one our destination, until we boarded this ship. But – he saw both of us, Patch, both me and Po, and of course he recognized us. There are only a few places we could hide the child. He’l look for her here eventual y. I must find a place to hide, in the castle or on the lands. Or even someplace in the Lienid wilderness.”

“The weather will be harsh, Lady Princess, until spring.”

“Yes. well, I may not be able to keep her comfortable. But I’ll keep her safe.”

———

Po had said his castle was small , more akin to a large house than a castle. But after seeing the way Ror’s castle fil ed the sky, Katsa wondered if Po’s scale of measure might differ from other people’s. Randa’s castle was large. Ror’s was gargantuan. Where Po’s fit in was yet to be seen.

When she finally did see Po’s castle, she was pleased. It was small , or at least it seemed it from her position in the riggings of the ship far below. It was simply built of whitewashed stone, the balconies and the window frames painted a blue to match the sky, and only a single square tower, rising somewhere from the back, to suggest it was more than a house. Its position, of course, was far from simple, and its position pleased Katsa even more than its simplicity. A cliff reached up and out from the water, and the castle balanced at the cliff’s very edge. It looked as if it might tumble forward at any moment, as if the wind might find purchase in some crack in the foundations, and tip the castle, creaking and screaming, over the drop and into the sea. She could understand why the balconies were dangerous in winter. Some of them hung over empty space.

Below the castle, the sea threw itself against the base of the cliff. But there was one nook in the rock, one small inlet where water broke and foamed onto sand. A tiny beach. And a stairway leading up from the beach, rising against the side of the cliff, turning back on itself, disappearing occasional y, and climbing finally up the side of the castle and onto one of those dizzying balconies.

“Where will we dock?” she asked the captain when she’d scrambled down to the deck.

“There’s a bay on the other side of this rise of rock, some distance beyond the beach. We’l dock there. A path leads up from the bay and away from the castle – you’l think you’re going the wrong way, Lady Princess – but then it loops back, and takes you up a great hil to the castle’s front.

There may be snow, but the path is kept clear in case the prince returns.”

“You speak as if you know it well .”

“I captained a small er ship a few years back, Lady Princess, a supply ship. The castles of Lienid are all beautiful y situated, but believe me when I tell you they’re none of them easy to supply. It’s a steep path to the door.”

“How large a staff does he keep?”

“I’d expect very few people, Lady Princess. And I’ll remind you that it’s your castle at the moment, and your servants, though you continue to refer to them as his.”

Yes, this she knew; and it was one of the reasons she wasn’t looking forward to her first encounter with the inhabitants of the castle. The appearance of Lady Katsa of the Middluns, renowned thug, in possession of Po’s ring; the absurd, tragic story she had to tell about Leck and Ashen; and her subsequent intentions to turn the castle into a fortress and cut off contact with the outside world. Katsa had a feeling it wouldn’t go smoothly.

———

The path was just as Captain Faun had described, and the hil steep and ridged with drifts of snow. But the greater problem was Bitterblue’s sea legs. She walked on land almost as clumsily as she’d walked at first at sea, and Katsa held her up as they climbed toward Po’s front door. The wind gusted from behind, so that it felt as if they were being blown up the hil .

The castle wasn’t much more castlelike from this angle. It seemed a tal white house at the top of a slope, with a number of massive trees overshadowing a courtyard that would be pleasant in better weather; a great tower rising behind the trees; tal windows, high roofs, at least one widow’s walk; stables to one side and a frozen garden to the other; and no indication, as long as one’s ears didn’t catch the crash of waves, that behind it all was a drop to the sea.

They reached the top of the hil . A gust of wind pushed them onto the colorful tiled surface of the courtyard.

Bitterblue sighed, relieved to encounter flat land. They approached the house, and Katsa raised her fist to Po’s great wooden door. Before she could knock, the door swung open and a rush of warmth hit their faces. A Lienid man stood before her, oldish, dressed like a servant in a long brown coat.

“Greetings,” he said. “Please come into the receiving room. Quickly,” the man said, as Katsa stood unmoving, startled by his hasty reception.

“We’re letting the heat escape.”

The man ushered them into a dark hall. At first glance, Katsa saw high ceilings, a stairway leading to banistered passageways above, and at least three burning fireplaces. Bitterblue steadied herself on Katsa’s arm.

“I’m Lady Katsa of the Middluns,” Katsa began, but the man waved them forward toward a set of double doors.

“This way,” he said. “My master is expecting you.” Katsa’s jaw went slack with surprise. She stared at the man, incredulous. “Your master! Do you mean he’s here? How is that possible? Where is he?”

“Please, My Lady,” the servant said. “Come this way. The whole family is in the receiving room.”

“The whole family!”

The man swept his hand toward the doors straight ahead. Katsa looked at Bitterblue and knew that the girl’s astonished face must mirror her own. Certainly there had been time for Po to make his way home; Katsa and Bitterblue had been ages in the mountains. But how could he, in such health? And how leave his hiding place, without being seen? Why, how – The man shooed them forward to the doors, and Katsa tried to formulate a question, any question.

“How long has the prince been here?” she asked.

“The princes have only just arrived,” the man said, and before she could ask what he meant he opened the doors.

“How wonderful,” a voice inside said. “Welcome, my friends! Come in and take your honored place among our happy circle!”

It was a familiar voice, and she caught Bitterblue and held the girl to her side when the child gasped and fel . Katsa looked up to see strangers sitting around the walls of a long room; and at the room’s end, smiling and appraising them through a single eye, King Leck of Monsea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Welcome. Friends. Honored place. Happy circle.

Katsa felt immediately that there was something she didn’t trust about this man who said such nice things, and in such a nice, warm voice.

There was something about him, some quality that kept her senses strung out to a high readiness. She did not like him.

Stil , his words were kind and welcoming, and this room of strangers smiled at him, and smiled at her, and there was no reason for her discomfort. No reason to dislike the man so instantly. She hesitated in the doorway, and stepped forward. She would proceed carefully.

The child was sick. Giving in final y, Katsa thought, to the dizzying steadiness under her feet. Bitterblue cried and clung to Katsa, and kept tell ing her to come away. “He’s lying,” she kept saying. “He’s lying.” Katsa looked at her blankly. Clearly the child didn’t like this man, either. Katsa would take that into consideration.

“My daughter is il . It pains me to see my daughter suffer,” Leck said; and Katsa remembered and understood that this man was Bitterblue’s father. “Help your niece,” Leck said to a woman on his left. The woman jumped up and came toward them with outstretched arms.

“Poor child,” the woman said. She tried to pul the girl away from Katsa, embracing her and murmuring to her comfortingly; but Bitterblue began to scream and slapped at the woman, and clung to Katsa like a crazed, frightened thing. Katsa took the child in her arms and shushed her, absently. She looked over Bitterblue’s head at the woman who was somehow Bitterblue’s aunt. The woman’s face jarred into her mind. Her forehead, her nose were familiar. Not the color of her eyes, but the shape of them. Katsa glanced at the woman’s hands and understood. This was Po’s mother.

“She’s hysterical,” Po’s mother said to Katsa.

“Yes,” Katsa said. She held the child close. “I’ll take care of her.”

“Where’s my son?” the woman asked, her eyes going wide with worry. “Do you know where my son is?”

“Indeed,” Leck said in his booming voice. He tilted his head, and his single eye watched Katsa. “You’re missing one of your party. I hope he’s alive?”

“Yes,” Katsa said – and then wondered, vaguely, if she’d meant to pretend he was dead. Hadn’t she pretended once before that Po was dead? But why would she have done that?

Leck’s eye snapped. “Is he really? Such wonderful news. Perhaps we can help him. Where is he?”

Bitterblue cried out. “Don’t tell him, Katsa. Don’t tell him where Po is, don’t tell him, don’t tell him – ”