Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(50)

Katsa nearly dropped her knife into the fire. “You have a wife?”

“Great seas, no! Honestly, Katsa. Don’t you think I would have mentioned her?”

He was laughing now, and she snorted. “I never know what you’ll choose to mention about yourself, Po.”

“It’s meant for the eyes of the wife I’m supposed to have,” he said.

“Whom will you marry?”

He shrugged. “I hadn’t pictured myself marrying anyone.”

She moved to his side of the fire and sliced the other drumstick for herself. She went back and sat down. “Aren’t you concerned about your castle and your land? About producing heirs?”

He shrugged again. “Not enough to attach me to a person I don’t wish to be attached to. I’m content enough on my own.”

Katsa was surprised. “I had thought of you as more of a social creature, when you’re in your own land.”

“When I’m in Lienid I do a decent job of folding myself into normal society, when I must. But it’s an act, Katsa; it’s always an act. It’s a strain to hide my Grace, especially from my family. When I’m in my father’s city there’s a part of me that’s simply waiting until I can travel again. Or return to my own castle, where I’m left alone.”

This she could understand perfectly. “I suppose if you married, it could only be to a woman trustworthy enough to know the truth of your Grace.”

He barked out a short laugh. “Yes. The woman I married would have to meet a number of rather impossible requirements.” He threw the bone from his drumstick into the fire and cut another piece of meat from the goose. He blew on the meat, to cool it. “And what of you, Katsa? You’ve broken Giddon’s heart with your departure, haven’t you?

”

His very name filled her with impatience. “Giddon. And can you really not see why I wouldn’t wish to marry him?”

“I can see a thousand reasons why you wouldn’t wish to marry him. But I don’t know which is your reason.”

“Even if I wished to marry, I wouldn’t marry Giddon,” Katsa said. “But I won’t marry, not anyone. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard that rumor. You were at Randa’s court long enough.”

“Oh, I heard it. But I also heard you were some kind of feckless thug and that Randa had you under his thumb.

Neither of which turned out to be true.”

She smiled then and threw her own bone into the fire. One of the horses whickered. Some small creature slipped into the pond, the water closing around it with a gulp. She suddenly felt warm and content, and full of good food.

“Raffin and I talked once about marrying,” she said. “For he’s not wild about the idea of marrying some noblewoman who thinks only of being rich or being queen. And of course, he must marry someone, he has no choice in the matter. And to marry me would be an easy solution. We get along, I wouldn’t try to keep him from his experiments.

He wouldn’t expect me to entertain his guests, he wouldn’t keep me from the Council.” She thought of Raffin bending over his books and his flasks. He was probably working on some experiment right now, with Bann at his side. By the time she returned to court, perhaps he would be married to some lady or another. He married, and she not there for him to come to and talk of it; she not there to tell him her thoughts, if he wished to hear them, as he always did.

“In the end,” she said, “it was out of the question. We laughed about it, for I couldn’t even begin to consider it seriously. I wouldn’t ever consent to be queen. And Raffin will require children, which I’d also never consent to. And I won’t be so tied to another person. Not even Raffin.” She squinted into the fire, and sighed over her cousin whose responsibilities were so heavy. “I hope he’ll fall in love with some woman who’ll make a happy queen and mother.

That would be the best thing for him. Some woman who wants a whole roost of children.”

Po tilted his head at her. “Do you dislike children?”

“I’ve never disliked the children I’ve met. I’ve just never wanted them. I haven’t wanted to mother them. I can’t explain it.”

She remembered Giddon then, who had assured her that this would change. As if he knew her heart, as if he had the slightest understanding of her heart. She threw another bone into the fire and hacked another piece of meat from the goose. She felt Po’s eyes, and looked up at him, scowling.

“Why are you glaring at me,” he asked, “when for all I can tell, you’re not angry with me?”

She smiled. “I was only thinking Giddon would have found me a very vexing wife. I wonder if he would’ve understood when I planted a patch of seabane in the gardens. Or perhaps he would’ve thought me charmingly domestic.”

Po looked puzzled. “What’s seabane?”

“I don’t know if you have another name for it in Lienid. It’s a small purple flower. A woman who eats its leaves will not bear a child.”

———

They wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay before the dying fire. Po yawned a great, deep yawn, but Katsa wasn’t tired. A question occurred to her. But she didn’t want to wake him, if he was falling asleep.

“What is it, Katsa? I’m awake.”