Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(7)
———
The forests of the southern Middluns gave way to hills, low hills at first that would grow as they neared Estill. They stopped only once, at midday, to change their horses at a secluded inn that had offered its services to the Council.
With fresh horses they made good time, and by nightfall they approached the Estillan border. With an early start they could reach the Estillan estate that was their destination by midmorning, do their business for Randa, and then turn back. They could travel at a reasonable pace and still return to Randa City before nightfall of the following day, which was when they were expected. And then Katsa would know whether Prince Raffin had learned anything from the Lienid grandfather.
They made camp against an enormous rock crag that broke through the base of one of the eastern hills. There was a chill to the night, but they decided against a fire. Mischief hid in the hills along the Estillan border, and though they were safe with two sworded men and Katsa, there was no reason to attract trouble. They ate a supper of bread, cheese, and water from their flasks, and then they climbed into their bedrolls.
“I’ll sleep well tonight,” Giddon said, yawning. “It’s lucky that inn came forward to the Council. We would’ve ridden the horses into the ground.”
“It surprises me, the friends the Council is finding,” Oll said.
Giddon propped himself up onto his elbow. “Did you expect it, Katsa? Did you think your Council would spread as it has?”
What had she expected when she’d started the Council? She’d imagined herself, alone, sneaking through passageways and around corners, an invisible force working against the mindlessness of the kings. “I never even imagined it spreading beyond me.”
“And now we have friends in almost every kingdom,” Giddon said. “People are opening their homes. Did you know one of the Nanderan borderlords brought an entire village behind his walls when the Council learned of a Westeran raiding party? The village was destroyed, but every one of them lived.” He settled down onto his side and yawned again. “It’s heartening. The Council does some good.”
———
Katsa lay on her back and listened to the men’s steady breathing. The horses, too, slept. But not Katsa: Two days of hard riding and a sleepless night between, and she was awake. She watched clouds flying across the sky, blotting out the stars and revealing them again. The night air puffed and set the hill grass rustling.
The first time she’d hurt someone for Randa had been in a border village not far from this camp. An underlord of Randa’s had been exposed as a spy, on the payroll of King Thigpen of Estill. The charge was treason and the punishment was death. The underlord had fled toward the Estillan border.
Katsa had been all of ten years old. Randa had come to one of her practice sessions and watched her, an unpleasant smile on his face. “Are you ready to do something useful with your Grace, girl?” he called out to her.
Katsa stopped her kicking and whirling and stood still, struck by the notion that her Grace could have any beneficial use.
“Hmm,” Randa said, smirking at her silence. “Your sword is the only bright thing about you. Pay attention, girl. I’m sending you after this traitor. You’re to kill him, in public, using your bare hands, no weapons. Just him, no one else.
I’m sure we all hope you’ve learned to control your bloodlust by now.”
Katsa shrank suddenly, too small to speak, even if she’d had something to say. She understood his order. He refused her the use of weapons because he didn’t want the man to die cleanly. Randa wanted a bloody, anguished spectacle, and he expected her to furnish it.
Katsa set out with Oll and a convoy of soldiers. When the soldiers caught the underlord, they dragged him to the square of the nearest village, where a scattering of startled people watched, slack jawed. Katsa instructed the soldiers to make the man kneel. In one motion she snapped his neck. There was no blood; there was no more than an instant’s pain.
Most in the crowd didn’t even realize what had happened.
When Randa heard what she’d done he was angry, angry enough that he called her to his throne room. He looked down at her from his raised seat, his eyes blue and hard, his smile nothing more than a baring of teeth. “What’s the point of a public execution,” he said, “if the public misses the part where the fellow dies? I can see that when I give orders I shall have to compensate for your mental ineptitude.”
After that his commands included specifics: blood and pain, for this or that length of time. There was no way around what he wanted. The more Katsa did it, the better she got at it. And Randa got what he wished, for her reputation spread like a cancer. Everyone knew what came to those who crossed King Randa of the Middluns.
After a while Katsa forgot about defiance. It became too difficult to imagine.
———
On their many travels to perform Randa’s errands, Oll told the girl of things Randa’s spies learned when they crossed into the other kingdoms. Young girls who had disappeared from an Estillan village and reappeared weeks later in a Westeran whorehouse. A man held in a Nanderan dungeon as punishment for his brother’s thievery, for his brother was dead, and someone had to be punished. A tax that the King of Wester had decided to levy on the villages of Estill – a tax Wester’s soldiers saw fit to collect by slaying Estillan villagers and emptying their pockets.