Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(3)

Prince Raffin was the only one who sought her company. “You won’t do it again, will you? I don’t think my father will let you kill anyone you want.”

“I never meant to kill him,” she said.

“What happened?”

Katsa sent her mind back. “I felt like I was in danger. So I hit him.”

Prince Raffin shook his head. “You need to control a Grace,” he said. “Especially a killing Grace. You must, or my father will stop us seeing each other.”

This was a frightening notion. “I don’t know how to control it.”

Raffin considered this. “You could ask Oll. The king’s spies know how to hurt without killing. It’s how they get information.”

Raffin was eleven, three years Katsa’s senior, and by her young standards, very wise. She took his advice and went to Oll, King Randa’s graying captain and his spymaster. Oll wasn’t foolish; he knew to fear the quiet girl with one eye blue and one eye green. But he also had some imagination. He wondered, as it had occurred to no one else to wonder, whether Katsa hadn’t been just as shocked by her cousin’s death as everyone else. And the more he thought about it, the more curious he became about her potential.

He started their training by setting rules. She would not practice on him, and she would not practice on any of the king’s men. She would practice on dummies that she made out of sacks, sewn together and filled with grain. She would practice on the prisoners that Oll brought to her, men whose deaths were already decreed.

She practiced every day. She learned her own speed and her own explosive force. She learned the angle, position, and intensity of a killing blow versus a maiming blow. She learned how to disarm a man and how to break his leg, and how to twist his arm so severely that he would stop struggling and beg for release. She learned to fight with a sword and with knives and daggers. She was so fast and focused, so creative, she could find a way to beat a man senseless with both arms tied to her sides. Such was her Grace.

In time her control improved, and she began to practice with Randa’s soldiers – eight or ten at a time, and in full suits of armor. Her practices were a spectacle: grown men grunting and clattering around clumsily, an unarmed child whirling and diving among them, knocking them down with a knee or a hand that they didn’t see coming until they were already on the floor. Sometimes members of the court would come by to watch her practices. But if she caught their gaze, their eyes would drop and they would hurry on.

King Randa had not minded the sacrifice of Oll’s time. He thought it necessary. Katsa wouldn’t be useful if she remained uncontrolled. And now in King Murgon’s courtyard, no one could criticize her control.

She moved across the grass beside the gravel paths, swiftly, soundlessly. By now Oll and Giddon must almost have reached the garden wall, where two of Murgon’s servants, friends of the Council, guarded their horses. She was nearly there herself; she saw the dark line ahead, black against a black sky. Her thoughts rambled, but she wasn’t daydreaming. Her senses were sharp. She caught the fall of every leaf in the garden, the rustle of every branch.

And so she was astonished when a man stepped out of the darkness and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his arm around her chest and held a knife to her throat. He started to speak, but in an instant she had deadened his arm, wrenched the knife from his hand, and thrown the blade to the ground. She flung him forward, over her shoulders. He landed on his feet. Her mind raced. He was Graced, a fighter. That much was clear. And unless he had no feeling in the hand that had raked her chest, he knew she was a woman.

He turned back to face her. They eyed each other, warily, each no more than a shadow to the other. He spoke. “I’ve heard of a lady with this particular Grace.”

His voice was gravelly and deep. There was a lilt to his words; it was not an accent she knew. She must learn who he was, so that she could know what to do with him.

“I can’t think what that lady would be doing so far from home, running through the courtyard of King Murgon at midnight,” he said.

He shifted slightly, placed himself between her and the wall. He was taller than she was, and smooth in his movements, like a cat. Deceptively calm, ready to spring. A torch on the path nearby caught the glimmer of small gold hoops in his ears. And his face was unbearded, like a Lienid. She shifted and swayed, her body ready, like his. She didn’t have much time to decide. He knew who she was. But if he was a Lienid, she didn’t want to kill him.

“Don’t you have anything to say, Lady? Surely you don’t think I’ll let you pass without an explanation?” There was something playful in his voice.

She watched him, quietly. He stretched his arms in one fluid motion, and her eyes unraveled the bands of gold that gleamed on his fingers. It was enough. The hoops in his ears, the rings, the lilt in his words – it was enough. “You’re a Lienid,” she said.

“You have good eyesight,” he said.

“Not good enough to see the colors of your eyes.”

He laughed. “I think I know the colors of yours.”

Common sense told her to kill him. “You’re one to speak of being far from home,” she said. “What’s a Lienid doing in the court of King Murgon?”

“I’ll tell you my reasons if you’ll tell me yours.”

“I’ll tell you nothing, and you must let me pass.”