Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(35)

Oll cleared his throat. “It will be as you say, My Lady.”

She faced Giddon. “Giddon?”

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Giddon – ”

“It will be as you say,” he said, his eyes on the floor and his face red and gloomy.

Katsa turned to Ellis. “Lord Ellis, if Randa learns that Captain Oll or Lord Giddon agreed to this willingly, I’ll know that you spoke. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill your daughters. Do you understand?”

“I understand, My Lady,” Ellis said. “And again, I thank you.”

Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she’d threatened him so brutally. When you’re a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

“And now in this room, with only ourselves present,” she said, “we’ll work out the details of what we’ll claim happened here today.”

———

They ate dinner in Giddon’s dining room, in Giddon’s castle, just as they had the night before. Giddon had given her permission to cut his neck with her knife, and Oll had allowed her to bruise his cheekbone. She would have done it without their permission, for she knew Randa would expect evidence of a scuffle. But Oll and Giddon had seen the wisdom of it; or perhaps they’d guessed she would do it whether or not they agreed. They’d stood still, and bravely. She hadn’t enjoyed the task, but she’d caused them as little pain as her skill allowed.

There was not much conversation at dinner. Katsa broke bread, chewed, and swallowed. She stared at the fork and knife in her hands. She stared at her silver goblet.

“The Estillan lord,” she said. The men’s eyes jumped up from their plates. “The lord who took more lumber from Randa than he should have. You remember him?”

They nodded.

“I didn’t hurt him,” she said. “That is, I knocked him unconscious. But I didn’t injure him.” She put her knife and fork down, and looked from Giddon to Oll. “I couldn’t. He more than paid for his crime in gold. I couldn’t hurt him.”

They watched her for a moment. Giddon’s eyes dropped to his plate. Oll cleared his throat. “Perhaps the Council work has put us in touch with our better natures,” he said.

Katsa picked up her knife and fork, cut into her mutton, and thought about that. She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed, green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as the vessel of the king’s fury.

But then, it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.

A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?

Perhaps she wouldn’t recognize her own nature after all.

There were too many questions, and too few answers, at this dinner table in Giddon’s castle. She would like to be traveling with Raffin, or Po, rather than Oll and Giddon; they would have answers, of one kind or another.

She must guard against using her Grace in anger. This was where her nature’s struggle lay.

———

After dinner, she went to Giddon’s archery range, hoping the thunk of arrows into a target would calm her mind.

There, he found her.

She had wanted to be by herself. But when Giddon stepped out of the shadows, tall and quiet, she wished they were in a great hall with hundreds of people. A party even, she in a dress and horrible shoes. A dance. Any place other than alone with Giddon, where no one would stumble upon them and no one would interrupt.

“You’re shooting arrows at a target in the dark,” Giddon said.

She lowered her bow. She supposed this was one of his criticisms. “Yes,” she said, for she could think of no other response.

“Are you as good a shot in the dark as you are in the light?”

“Yes,” she said, and he smiled, which made her nervous. If he was going to be pleasant, then she feared where this was heading; she would much prefer him to be arrogant and critical, and unpleasant, if they must be alone together.

“There’s nothing you cannot do, Katsa.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

But he seemed determined not to argue. He smiled again and leaned against the wooden railing that separated her lane from the others. “What do you think will happen at Randa’s court tomorrow?” he asked.

“Truly, I don’t know,” Katsa said. “Randa will be very angry.”

“I don’t like that you’re protecting me from his anger, Katsa. I don’t like it at all.”

“I’m sorry, Giddon, as I’m sorry for the cut on your neck. Shall we return to the castle?” She lifted the strap of the quiver over her head, and set it on the ground. He watched her, quietly, and a small panic began to stir in her chest.

“You should let me protect you,” he said.

“You can’t protect me from the king. It would be fatal to you, and a waste of your energies. Let’s go back to the castle.”