Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(29)

“Greening should be the one to do it, anyway,” Giddon said, and Po’s cool eyes flicked to him again. “Murgon wouldn’t question the motivation of a Lienid prince. Murgon would expect it of him. In fact, I don’t see why you haven’t done it already,” Giddon said to Po, “if you wish so much to know who’s responsible.”

Katsa was too irritated to care about her strategic seating plan. She leaned around Raffin and Bann to address Giddon. “It’s because Murgon can’t know that Po knows Murgon is involved,” she said. “How would Po explain that knowledge, without incriminating us?”

“But that’s just why you can’t question Murgon’s people, Katsa, unless you’re willing to kill afterwards.” Giddon thumped his hand on the table and glared at her.

“All right,” Raffin said, “all right. We’re going in circles.”

Katsa sat back, seething.

“Katsa,” Raffin said, “the information isn’t worth the risk to you or to the Council. Nor, I think, is it worth the violence.”

She sighed, inwardly. He was right, of course.

“Perhaps it’ll be worth it someday in the future,” Raffin said. “But for now, Grandfather Tealiff is safe, and we’ve seen no sign from Murgon or from anyone else that he’s being targeted again. Po, if there are steps you wish to take, that’s your affair, though I’d ask you to discuss it with us first.”





“I must think on it,” Po said.

“Then the matter is closed for now,” Raffin said, “until we learn something new, or until Po comes to a decision.

Oll? Is there anything else on the table?”

Oll began to speak then of a Westeran village that had met a Nanderan raiding party with a pair of catapults, given to them by a Westeran lord who was friend to the Council. The Nanderan raiders had fled, thinking they were being attacked by an army. There was laughter at the table, and Oll began another story, but Katsa’s thoughts wandered to Murgon and his dungeons, to the Sunderan forests that likely held the secrets of the kidnapping. She felt Po’s gaze, and she glanced at him across the table. His eyes were on her, but he didn’t see her. His mind was elsewhere. He got that look sometimes, when they sat together after their fights.

She watched his face. The cut on his forehead was no more than a thin red line now. It would leave a scar. She wondered if that would rankle his Lienid vanity, but then she smiled within herself. He wasn’t really vain. He hadn’t cared a bit when she’d blackened his eye. He’d done nothing to hide the gash on his forehead. And besides, no vain person would choose to fight her, day after day. No vain person would put his body at the mercy of her hands.

His sleeves were rolled to his elbows again. His manners were so careless. Her eyes rested on the shadows in the hollows of his neck, then rose to his face again. She supposed he would have reason to be vain. He was handsome enough, as handsome as Giddon or Raffin, with his straight nose and the set of his mouth, and his strong shoulders.

And even those gleaming eyes. Even they might be considered handsome.

His eyes came back into focus then and looked into hers. And then something mischievous in his eyes, and a grin.

Almost as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, exactly what she’d decided about his claims to vanity. Katsa’s face closed, and she glowered at him.

The meeting ended, and chairs scraped. Raffin pulled her aside to speak of something. She was grateful for the excuse to turn away. She wouldn’t see Po again until their next fight. And the fights always returned her to herself.





CHAPTER TWELVE




The next morning Randa came to their practice for the first time. He stood at the side, so that everyone in the room was compelled to stand as well and watch him instead of the fighters they’d come to see. Katsa was glad to fight, glad for the excuse to ignore him. Except that she couldn’t ignore him. He was so tall and broad, and he stood against the white wall in bright blue robes. His lazy laugh carried into every corner of the room. She couldn’t shake the sense of him – and there must be something he wanted. He never sought out his lady killer unless there was something he wanted.

She had been running through a drill with Po when Randa had arrived, a drill that was giving her some trouble. It began with Katsa on her knees and Po behind her, pinning her arms behind her back. Her task was to break free of Po’s grip and then grapple with him until she had trapped him in the same position. She could always fight her way free of Po’s grip. That wasn’t the problem. It was the counterpin that frustrated her. Even if she managed to knock him to his knees and trap his arms, she couldn’t keep him down. It was a matter of brute strength. If he tried to muscle himself to his feet, she didn’t have the force to stop him, not unless she knocked him unconscious or injured him seriously, and that wasn’t the point of the exercise. She needed to find a holding position that would make the effort of rising too painful to be worth his while.

They began the drill again. She knelt with Po at her back, and Po’s hands tightened around her wrists. Randa’s voice rose and fell, and one of the stewards responded. Flattering, fawning. Everyone flattered Randa.

Katsa was ready for Po this time. She twisted out of his grip and was on him like a wildcat. She pummeled his stomach, hooked her foot between his legs, and battered him to his knees. She yanked at his arms. His right shoulder –