Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(95)
“I’m afraid we won’t get much sleep tonight, child,” Katsa said. “We must leave this house before the rest of the family wakes in the morning.”
“And you think that bothers me? This evening has been bliss. The lack of sleep will be nothing.”
Nonetheless, when Katsa and Bitterblue lay down in a bed for the first time in a very long time – the bed of the storekeeper and his wife, though Katsa had protested their sacrifice – Bitterblue dropped into an exhausted sleep. Katsa lay on her back and tried not to let the calm breath of her bed companion, the softness of mattress and pillow delude her into believing they were safe. She thought of the gaps she’d left in the story she’d told that night.
The family of the storekeeper now understood the horror that was King Leck’s Grace. They understood Ashen’s murder and the events surrounding the kidnapping of Grandfather Tealiff. They’d surmised, though Katsa had never
told them explicitly, that the child eating bread and cheese as if she’d never seen it before was the Monsean princess who fled her father. They even understood that if Leck chose to spread a false story through Sunder, their minds might lose the truth of everything she’d told them. All of this the family marveled at, accepted, and understood.
Katsa had omitted one truth, and she had told one lie. The truth omitted was their destination. Leck might be able to confuse this family into admitting the lady and the princess had knocked on their door and slept under their roof. But he’d never be able to talk them into revealing a destination they didn’t know.
The lie told was that the Lienid prince was dead, killed by Leck’s guards when he’d tried to murder the Monsean king. Katsa supposed this lie was a waste of her breath. The opportunity for the family to speak of it would never arise.
But when she could, she would make Po out to be dead. The more people who thought him dead, the fewer people would think to seek him out and do him harm.
To the Sunderan port cities they must now go. Ride south to sail west. But her thoughts as she lay beside the sleeping princess tended east, to a cabin beside a waterfall; and north, to a workroom in a castle and a figure bent over a book, a beaker, or a fire.
How she wished she could take Bitterblue north to Randa City and hide her there as they’d hidden her grandfather.
North to Raffin’s comfort, Raffin’s patience and care. But even ignoring the complications of her own status at Randa’s court, it was impossible. Unthinkable to hide the child in such an obvious place, and so close to Leck’s dominion; unthinkable to take this crisis to those Katsa held most dear. She would not entangle Raffin with a man who took away all reason, and warped intention. She would not lead Leck to her friends. She would not involve her friends at all.
She and the child would start tomorrow. They would ride the horse into the ground. They would find passage to Lienid, and she would hide the child; and then she would think.
She closed her eyes and ordered herself to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Katsa’s first view of the sea was like her first view of the mountains, though mountains and sea were nothing like each other. The mountains were silent, and the sea was rushing noise, calm, and rushing noise again. The mountains were high, and the sea was flatness reaching so far into the distance she was surprised she couldn’t see the lights of some faraway land twinkling back at her. They were nothing alike. But she couldn’t stop staring at the sea, or breathing in the sea air, and thus had the mountains affected her.
The cloth tied over her green eye limited her view. Katsa itched to tear it off, but she dared not, when they’d made it this far, first through the outskirts of this city and finally through the city streets themselves. They’d moved only at night, and no one had recognized them. Which was the same as saying she hadn’t had to kill anyone. A scuffle here and there, when thugs on a dark street had grown a little too curious about the two boys slipping southward toward the water at midnight. But never recognition, and never more trouble than Katsa could handle without arousing suspicion.
This was Suncliff, the largest of the Sunderan port cities and the one with the heaviest traffic in trade. A city that by night struck Katsa as run-down and grim, crowded with narrow, seedy streets that seemed as if they should lead to a prison or a slum, and not to this astonishing expanse of water. Water stretching out, filling her, erasing any consciousness of the drunkards and thieves, the broken buildings and streets at her back.
“How will we find a Lienid ship?” Bitterblue asked.
“Not just a Lienid ship,” Katsa said. “A Lienid ship that hasn’t recently been to Monsea.”
“I could check around,” Bitterblue said, “while you hide.”
“Absolutely not. Even if you weren’t who you are, this place would be unsafe. Even if it weren’t night. Even if you weren’t so small.”
Bitterblue wrapped her arms tightly around herself and turned her back to the wind. “I envy you your Grace.”
“Let’s go,” Katsa said. “We must find a ship tonight, or we spend tomorrow hiding under the noses of thousands of people.”
Katsa pulled the girl into the protection of her arm. They worked their way across the rocks to the streets and stairways that led down to the docks.
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