Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(53)

For an instant Katsa appreciated the strange symmetry; except that unlike the serving girl, she could break from Po’s grip, and unlike the merchant, Po had good reason to hold her arm. And Katsa wouldn’t break from the grip of his fingers, for she didn’t need to. Her rise to her feet had been enough. The room froze into stillness. The man dropped the girl’s arm. He stared at Katsa with a white face and an open mouth – fear, as familiar to Katsa as the feel of her own body. The girl stared, too, and caught her breath and pressed her hand to her chest.

“Sit down, Katsa.” Po’s voice was low. “It’s over now. Sit down.”

She did sit down. The room let out its breath. After a few moments, voices murmured, and then talked and laughed again. But Katsa wasn’t sure that it was over. Perhaps it was over with this girl, and these merchants. But there would be a new group of merchants tomorrow. And these merchants would move on, and find themselves another girl.

———

Later that evening, as Katsa prepared for bed, two girls came to her room to cut her hair. “Is it too late, My Lady?”

asked the elder, who carried scissors and a brush.

“No. The sooner I have it off, the better. Please, come in.”

They were young, younger than the serving girl. The younger, a child of ten or eleven years, carried a broom and a dustpan. They sat Katsa down and moved around her shyly. They spoke little. Breathless around her, not quite frightened but near to it. The older girl untied Katsa’s hair and began to work her fingers through the tangle. “Forgive me if I hurt you, My Lady.”

“It won’t hurt me,” Katsa said. “And you needn’t unravel the knots. I want you to cut it all off, as short as you can.

As short as a man’s.”

The eyes of both girls widened. “I’ve cut the hair of many men,” the older girl said.

“You may cut mine just as you’ve cut theirs,” Katsa said. “The shorter you cut it, the happier I’ll be.”

The scissors snipped around Katsa’s ears, and her head grew lighter and lighter. How odd to turn her neck and not feel the pull of hair, the heavy snarl swinging around behind her. The younger girl held the broom and swept the hair clippings away the instant they fell to the floor.

“Is it your sister I saw serving drinks in the eating room?” Katsa asked.

“Yes, My Lady.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen, My Lady.”

“And you?”

“I’m fourteen, and my sister eleven, My Lady.”

Katsa watched the younger girl collecting hair with a broom taller than she was.

“Does anyone teach the girls of the inn to protect themselves?” she asked. “Do you carry a knife?”

“Our father protects us, and our brother,” the girl said, simply.

The girls clipped and swept, and Katsa’s hair fell away. She thrilled at the unfamiliar chill of air on her neck. And wondered if other girls in Sunder, and across the seven kingdoms, carried knives; or if they all looked to their fathers and brothers for every protection.

———

A knock woke her. She sat up. It came from the door that adjoined her room to Po’s. She hadn’t been asleep long, and it was midnight; and enough moonlight spilled through her window so that if it wasn’t Po who knocked, and if it was an enemy, she could see well enough to beat the person senseless. All these thoughts swept through her mind in the instant she sat up.

“Katsa, it’s only I,” his voice called, through the keyhole. “It’s a double lock. You must unlock it from your side.”

She rolled out of bed. And where was the key?

“My key was hanging beside the door,” he called, and she took a moment to glare in his general direction.

“I only guessed you were looking for the key. It wasn’t my Grace, so you needn’t get all huffy about it.”

Katsa felt along the wall. Her fingers touched a key. “Doesn’t it make you nervous to holler like that? Anyone could hear you. You could be revealing your precious Grace to a whole legion of my lovers.”

His laughter came muffled through the door. “I would know if anyone heard my voice. And I’d also know if you were in there with a legion of lovers. Katsa – have you cut your hair?”

She snorted. “Wonderful. That’s just wonderful. I’ve no privacy, and you sense even my hair.” She turned the key in the lock and swung the door open. Po straightened, a candle in his hand.

“Great seas,” he said.

“What do you want?”

He held his candle up to her face.

“Po, what do you want?”

“She did a far better job than I would have done.”

“I’m going back to bed,” Katsa said, and she reached for the door.

“All right, all right. The men, the merchants. The Sunderan men who were bothering that girl. I think they intend to come to us this night and speak to us.”

“How do you know?”

“Their rooms are below us.”

She shook her head, disbelieving. “No one in this inn has privacy.”

“My sense of them is faint, Katsa. I cannot sense everyone down to the ends of their hair, as I do you.”

She sighed. “What an honor, then, to be me. They’re coming in the middle of the night?”