Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(93)
A merchant stood now in the yard of the inn, beside a cart stacked high with barrels. He stamped his feet and blew into his hands. The barrels were unmarked and the merchant nondescript, his coat and boots plain, none of his six horses bearing a brand or ornamentation indicating from which kingdom they came. The innkeeper burst into the yard with his sons, gesturing to them and to the horses. He yelled something to the merchant and his breath froze in the air.
The merchant called back, but not loudly enough to carry to the thick stand of trees outside the clearing, where Katsa and Bitterblue crouched, watching.
“He’s likely to be Monsean,” Bitterblue whispered, “come up from the ports and making his way through Sunder.
His cart is very full. If he’d come from one of the other kingdoms, wouldn’t he have sold more of whatever he’s carrying by now? Excepting Lienid, of course – but he doesn’t have the look of a Lienid, does he?”
Katsa rifled through her maps. “It hardly matters. Even if we determine he’s from Nander or Wester, we don’t know who else is at the inn, or who else is likely to arrive. We can’t risk it, not until we know whether one of your father’s stories has spread into Sunder. We were weeks in the mountains, child. We’ve no idea what these people have heard.”
“The story may not have reached this far. We’re some distance from the ports and the mountain pass, and this place is isolated.”
“True,” Katsa said, “but we don’t want to provide them with a story, either, to spread up to the mountain pass or down to the ports. The less Leck knows about where we’ve been, the better.”
“But in that case, no inn will be safe. We’ll have to get ourselves from here to Lienid without anyone seeing us.”
Katsa examined her maps and didn’t answer.
“Unless you’re planning to kill everyone we see,” Bitterblue grumbled. “Oh, Katsa, look – that girl is carrying eggs.
Oh, I would kill for an egg.”
Katsa glanced up to see the girl, bareheaded and shivering, scuttling from barn to inn with a basket of eggs hung over one arm. The innkeeper gestured to her and called out. The girl set the basket at the base of an enormous tree and hurried over to him. He and the merchant handed her bag after bag, and she slung them over her back and shoulders, until Katsa could barely see her anymore for the bags that covered her. She staggered into the inn. She came out again, and they loaded her down again.
Katsa counted the scattered trees that stood between their hiding place and the basket of eggs. She glanced at the frozen remains of the vegetable garden. Then she shuffled through the maps again and grabbed hold of the list of Council contacts in Sunder. She flattened the page onto her lap.
“I know where we are,” Katsa said. “There’s a town not far from here, perhaps two days’ walk. According to Raffin, a storekeeper there is friendly to the Council. I think we might go there safely.”
“Just because he’s friendly to the Council doesn’t mean he’ll be able to see through whatever story Leck’s spreading.”
“True,” Katsa said. “But we need clothing and information. And you need a hot bath. If we could get to Lienid without encountering anyone, we would; but it’s impossible. If we must trust someone, I’d prefer it to be a Council sympathizer.”
Bitterblue scowled. “You need a hot bath as much as I do.”
Katsa grinned. “I need a bath as much as you do. Mine doesn’t have to be hot. I’m not going to stick you into some half-frozen pond, to sicken and die, after all you’ve survived. Now, child,” Katsa said, as the merchant and the innkeeper shouldered bags of their own and headed for the inn’s entrance, “don’t move until I get back.”
“Where…” Bitterblue began, but Katsa was already flying from tree to tree, hiding behind one massive trunk and then another, peeking out to watch the windows and doors of the inn. When moments later Katsa and Bitterblue resumed their trek through the Sunderan forest, Katsa had four eggs inside her sleeve and a frozen pumpkin on her shoulder. Their dinner that night had the air of a celebration.
———
There wasn’t much Katsa could do about her appearance or Bitterblue’s when it came time to knock on the storekeeper’s door, other than clean the dirt and grime as best she could from their faces, manhandle Bitterblue’s tangle of hair into some semblance of a braid, and wait until darkness fell. It was too cold to expect Bitterblue to remove her patchwork of furs, and Katsa’s wolf hides, no matter how alarming, were less appalling than the stained, tattered coat they hid.
The storekeeper was easily identified, his building the largest and busiest in the town save the inn. He was a man of average height and average build, had a sturdy, no-nonsense wife and an inordinate number of children who seemed to run the gamut from infancy to Katsa’s age and older. Or so Katsa gathered, as she and Bitterblue passed their time among the trees at the edge of the town waiting for night to fall. His store was sizable, and the brown house that rose above and behind it enormous. As it would have to be, Katsa thought, to contain so many children. Katsa wished, as the day progressed and more and more children issued from the building to feed the chickens, to help the merchants unload their goods, to play and fight, and squabble in the yard, that this Council contact had not taken his duty to procreate quite so seriously. They would have to wait not only until the town quieted, but until most of these children slept, if Katsa wished their appearance on the doorstep to cause less than an uproar.