Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(97)

Bitterblue stood and backed up a few steps, obligingly. Katsa stood, her arms raised away from her body. The boy paused, and then reached toward her pocket. As one hand fiddled to uncover the purse, the other held the knife just below Katsa’s throat. She thought she ought to appear nervous. Yet another reason to be grateful for the darkness that made her face unreadable.

Her purse finally in hand, the boy backed up a step or two. He opened it and shook a few gold pieces into his palm.

He inspected the coins in the moonlight, and then in the firelight glimmering dimly from shore.

“This is Lienid gold,” he said. “Not only are you thieves, but you’re thieves who’ve stolen from Lienid men.”

“Take us to your captain and let him decide whether to accept our gold. If you do so, a piece of it’s yours –

regardless of what he chooses.”

The boy considered the offer, and Katsa waited. Truly, it didn’t matter if he agreed to their terms or not, for they wouldn’t find a ship better suited to their purposes than this one. Katsa would get them aboard one way or another, even if she had to clunk this boy on the head and drag him up the gangplank, waving Po’s ring before the noses of the guards.

“All right,” the boy said. He chose a coin from the pile in his palm and tucked it inside his coat. “I’ll take you to Captain Faun for a piece of gold. But I warrant you’ll find yourself thrown into the brig for thievery. She won’t believe you came upon this honestly, and we don’t have time to report you to the authorities in the city.”

The word had not escaped Katsa’s attention. “She? Your captain is a woman?”

“A woman,” the boy said, “and Graced.”

A woman and Graced. Katsa didn’t know which should surprise her more. “Is this a ship of the king, then?”

“It’s her ship.”

“How – ”

“The Graced in Lienid are free. The king doesn’t own them.”

Yes, she remembered that Po had explained this.

“Are you coming,” the boy said, “or are we going to stand here conversing?”

“What’s her Grace?”

The boy stepped aside and waved them forward with his knife. “Go on,” he said. And so Katsa and Bitterblue moved up the dock, but Katsa listened for his answer. If this captain was a mind reader, or even a very competent fighter, she wanted to know before they reached the guards so she could decide whether to continue forward or shove this boy into the water and run.

Ahead of them, the guards spoke to each other and laughed at some joke. One of them held a torch. The flame strained against the wind and flashed across their rough faces, their broad chests, their unsheathed swords. Bitterblue gasped, ever so slightly, and Katsa shifted her attention to the child. Bitterblue was frightened. Katsa laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder and squeezed.

“It’ll be a swimming Grace,” she said idly to the boy behind them, “or some navigational ability. Am I right?”

“Her Grace is the reason we leave in the middle of the night,” the boy said. “She sees storms before they hit. We set out now to beat a blizzard coming up from the east.”

A weather seer. The prescient Graces were better than the mind-reading Graces, better by far, but still they gave Katsa a crawling feeling along her skin. Well, this captain’s profession was well suited to her Grace, anyway, and it wasn’t adverse to their purposes – might even be advantageous. Katsa would meet this Captain Faun and measure her, then decide how much to tell her.

The guards stared at them as they approached. One held the torch to their faces. Katsa ducked her chin into the neck of her coat and stared back at him with her single visible eye. “What’s this you’re bringing aboard, Jem?” the man asked.

“They go to the captain,” the boy said.

“Prisoners?”

“Prisoners or passengers. The captain will decide.”

The guard gestured to one of his companions. “Go with them, Bear,” he said, “and make sure no danger befalls our young Jem.”

“I can handle myself,” Jem said.

“Of course you can. But Bear can handle yourself, too, and himself, and your two prisoners, and carry a sword, and hold a light – all at the same time. And keep our captain safe.”

Jem might have been about to protest, but at the mention of the captain he nodded. He took the lead as Katsa and Bitterblue climbed up the gangplank. Bear fell in behind them, his sword swinging in one hand and a lantern raised in the other. He was one of the largest men Katsa had ever seen. As they stepped onto the deck of the ship, sailors moved aside, partly to stare at the two small and bedraggled strangers and partly to get out of Bear’s way. “What’s this, Jem?”

voices asked. “We go to the captain,” Jem responded, over and over, and the men fell away and went back to their duties.

The deck was long, and it was crowded with jostling men and with unfamiliar shapes that loomed to all sides of them and cast strange shadows against the light of Bear’s lantern. A sail billowed down suddenly, released from its confinement in the riggings. It flapped over Katsa’s head, glowing a luminous gray, looking very much like an enormous bird trying to break its leash and take off into the sky; and then it rose again just as suddenly, folded and strapped back into place. Katsa had no idea what it all meant, all this activity, but felt a kind of excitement at the strangeness and the rush, the voices shouting commands she didn’t recognize, the gusting wind, the pitching floor.