Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(102)

It was Katsa’s turn now to disbelieve. “You’ll really do this thing?”

“Lady Princess,” the captain said. “It’s not in my power to refuse anything you ask. But this thing I’ll do willingly, for as long as I can without endangering my men and my ship. And on the condition that I’ll be reimbursed for my lost trade.”

“That goes without saying.”

“Nothing in business goes without saying, Lady Princess.”

And so they made an agreement. The captain would hold at sea in a place near to Lienid, a specific place just west of an uninhabited island she could describe and another vessel could find, until such time as the other vessel came for her, or circumstances aboard her ship rendered it impossible for her isolation to continue.

“I’ve no idea what I’ll tell my crew,” the captain said.

“When the time comes for explanations,” Katsa said, “tell them the truth.”

———

The captain asked Katsa and Bitterblue one day, as they sat in the galley over a meal, how they’d gotten to Suncliff without being seen.

“We crossed the Monsean peaks into Sunder,” Katsa said, “and traveled through the forests. When we reached the outskirts of Suncliff, we traveled only by night.”

“How did you cross the mountain pass, Lady Princess? Wasn’t it guarded?”

“We didn’t cross at the mountain pass. We took Grella’s Pass.”

The captain peered at Katsa over the cup she’d raised to her face. She set the cup down. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.”

“You crossed Grella’s Pass and kept your fingers and toes let alone your lives? I might believe it of you, Lady Princess, but I can’t believe it of the child.”

“Katsa carried me,” Bitterblue said.

“And we had good weather,” Katsa added.

The captain’s laugh rang out. “It’s no use lying to me about the weather, Lady Princess. It’s snowed in Grella’s Pass every day since summer, and there are few places in the seven kingdoms colder.”

“Nonetheless, it could have been worse the day we crossed.” The captain was still laughing. “If I ever need a protector, Lady Princess, I hope to find you nearby.”

A day or two later, after Katsa had come up from one of the frigid ocean baths she liked to take – the baths that Bitterblue considered further proof she was mad – she sat on Bitterblue’s bunk and peeled away her soaking clothing.

Their quarters were barely big enough for the two bunks they slept in and badly lit by a lantern that swung from the ceiling. Bitterblue brought Katsa a cloth to dry her wet skin and frozen hair. She reached out to touch Katsa’s shoulder.

Katsa looked down and saw, in the wavering light, the lines of white skin that had caught the girl’s attention. The scars, where the claws of the mountain lion had torn her flesh. Lines on her breast, too.

“You’ve healed well,” Bitterblue said. “There’s no question who won that fight.”

“For all that,” Katsa said, “we weren’t evenly matched, and the cat had the advantage. On a different day it would’ve killed me.”

“I wish I had your skill,” Bitterblue said. “I’d like to be able to defend myself against anything.”

It wasn’t the first time Bitterblue had said something like that. And it was only one of countless times Katsa had remembered, with a stab of panic, that Bitterblue was wrong; that in her one and only encounter with Leck, Katsa had been defenseless.

———

Still, Bitterblue didn’t have to be as defenseless as she was. When Patch teased her one day about the knife she wore sheathed at her belt – the same knife, big as her forearm, she’d carried since the day Katsa and Po had found her in Leck’s forest – Katsa decided the time had come to make a threat of Bitterblue. Or as much of a threat as the child could be. How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people – girls, women –

went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

And so Katsa began to teach the girl. First to feel comfortable with a knife in her hand. To hold it properly, so that it wouldn’t slip from her fingers; to carry it easily, as if it were a natural extension of her arm. This first lesson gave the child more trouble than Katsa had anticipated. The knife was heavy. It was also sharp. It made Bitterblue nervous to carry an open blade across a floor that lurched and dipped. She held the hilt much too tightly, so tightly her arm ached and blisters formed on her palm.

“You fear your own knife,” Katsa said.

“I’m afraid of falling on it,” Bitterblue said, “or hurting someone with it by accident.”

“That’s natural enough. But you’re just as likely to lose control of it if you’re holding it too tightly as too loosely.

Loosen your grip, child. It won’t fall from your fingers if you hold it as I’ve taught you.”

And so the child would relax the hand that held the knife, until the floor tipped again or one of the sailors came near; and then she would forget what Katsa had said and grip the blade again with all her strength.

Katsa changed tactics. She put an end to official lessons, and instead had Bitterblue walk around the ship with the knife in her hand all afternoon for several days. Knife in hand, the child visited the sailors who were her friends, climbed the ladder between decks, ate meals in the galley, and craned her neck to watch Katsa scrambling around in the riggings. At first she sighed often and passed the knife heavily from one hand to the other. But then, after a day or two, it seemed not to bother her so much. A few days more and the knife swung loosely at her side. Not forgotten, for Katsa could see the care she took with the blade when the floor rocked, or when a friend was near. But comfortable in