Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(4)

“Must I?”

“If you don’t, I’ll have to force you.”

“Do you think you can?”

She faked to her right, and he swung away, easily. She did it again, faster. Again, he escaped her easily. He was very good. But she was Katsa.

“I know I can,” she said.

“Ah.” His voice was amused. “But it might take you hours.”

Why was he playing with her? Why wasn’t he raising the alarm? Perhaps he was a criminal himself, a Graceling criminal. And if so, did that make him an ally or an enemy? Wouldn’t a Lienid approve of her rescue of the Lienid prisoner? Yes – unless he was a traitor. Or unless this Lienid didn’t even know the contents of Murgon’s dungeons –

Murgon had kept the secret well.

The Council would tell her to kill him. The Council would tell her she put them at risk if she left a man alive who knew her identity. But he was unlike any thug she’d ever encountered. He didn’t feel brutish or stupid or threatening.

She couldn’t kill one Lienid while rescuing another.

She was a fool and she would probably regret it, but she wouldn’t do it.

“I trust you,” he said, suddenly. He stepped out of her path and waved her forward. She thought him very strange, and impulsive, but she saw he’d relaxed his guard, and she wasn’t one to waste an opportunity. In an instant she swung her boot up and clipped him on the forehead. His eyes opened wide with surprise, and he dropped to the ground.

“Maybe I didn’t have to do that.” She stretched him out, his sleeping limbs heavy. “But I don’t know what to think of you, and I’ve risked enough already, letting you live.” She dug the pills out of her sleeve, dropped one into his mouth.

She turned his face to the torchlight. He was younger than she’d thought, not much older than she, nineteen or twenty at most. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead, past his ear. The neck of his shirt was open, and the torchlight played along the line of his collarbone.

What a strange character. Maybe Raffin would know who he was.

She shook herself. They would be waiting.

She ran.

———

They rode hard. They tied the old man to his horse, for he was too weak to hold himself up. They stopped only once, to wrap him in more blankets.

Katsa was impatient to keep moving. “Doesn’t he know it’s midsummer?”

“He’s frozen through, My Lady,” Oll said. “He’s shivering, he’s ill. It’s no use if our rescue kills him.”

They talked about stopping, building a fire, but there was no time. They had to reach Randa City before daybreak or they would be discovered.

Perhaps I should have killed him, she thought as they thundered through dark forests. Perhaps I should have killed him. He knew who I was.

But he hadn’t seemed threatening or suspicious. He’d been more curious than anything. He’d trusted her.

Then again, he hadn’t known about the trail of drugged guards she’d left in her wake. And he wouldn’t trust her once he woke to that welt on his head.

If he told King Murgon of their encounter, and if Murgon told King Randa, things could get very tricky for the Lady Katsa. Randa knew nothing of the Lienid prisoner, much less of Katsa moonlighting as rescuer.

Katsa shook herself in frustration. These thoughts were no help, and it was done now. They needed to get the grandfather to safety and warmth, and Raffin. She crouched lower in her saddle and urged her horse north.





CHAPTER TWO




It was a land of seven kingdoms. Seven kingdoms, and seven thoroughly unpredictable kings. Why in the name of all that was reasonable would anyone kidnap Prince Tealiff, the father of the Lienid king? He was an old man. He had no power; he had no ambition; he wasn’t even well. Word was, he spent most of his days sitting by the fire, or in the sun, looking out at the sea, playing with his great-grandchildren, and bothering no one.

The Lienid people didn’t have enemies. They shipped their gold to whoever had the goods to trade for it; they grew their own fruit and bred their own game; they kept to themselves on their island, an ocean removed from the other six kingdoms. They were different. They had a distinctive dark-haired look and distinctive customs, and they liked their isolation. King Ror of Lienid was the least troublesome of the seven kings. He made no treaties with the others, but he made no war, and he ruled his own people fairly.

That the Council’s network of spies had traced King Ror’s father to King Murgon’s dungeons in Sunder answered nothing. Murgon tended not to create trouble among the kingdoms, but often enough he was a party to the trouble, the agent of another man’s crime as long as the money was good.

Without a doubt, someone had paid him to hold the Lienid grandfather. The question was, who?

Katsa’s uncle, Randa, King of the Middluns, was not involved in this particular trouble. The Council could be certain of this, for Oll was Randa’s spymaster and his confidant. Thanks to Oll, the Council knew everything there was to know about Randa.

In truth, Randa usually took care not to involve himself with the other kingdoms. His kingdom sat between Estill and Wester on one axis and between Nander and Sunder on the other. It was a position too tenuous for alliances.

The kings of Wester, Nander, and Estill – they were the source of most of the trouble. They were cast from the same hotheaded mold, all ambitious, all envious. All thoughtless and heartless and inconstant. King Birn of Wester and King Drowden of Nander might form an alliance and pummel Estill’s army on the northern borders, but Wester and Nander could never work together for long. Suddenly one would offend the other, and Wester and Nander would become enemies again, and Estill would join Nander to pound Wester.