Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(4)
Author: Kristin Cashore

They wound their way to one of the forest paths that paral eled the main road and set out eastward. They pulled their hoods low and pushed the horses hard. After a few minutes, the pounding of hooves surrounding her, Katsa’s irritation diminished. She couldn’t be worried for long when she was moving.

———

The forests of the southern Middluns gave way to hil s, low hil s 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 nightfal they approached the Estil an border. With an early start they could reach the Estil an estate that was their destination by midmorning, do their business for Randa, and then turn back. They could travel at a reasonable pace and stil return to Randa City before nightfal of the fol owing 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 hil s. There was a chil to the night, but they decided against a fire. Mischief hid in the hil s along the Estil an 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 bedrol s.

“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 vil age behind his walls when the Council learned of a Westeran raiding party? The vil age 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 hil grass rustling.

The first time she’d hurt someone for Randa had been in a border vil age not far from this camp. An underlord of Randa’s had been exposed as a spy, on the payrol of King Thigpen of Estil . The charge was treason and the punishment was death. The underlord had fled toward the Estil an 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 cal ed 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 vil age, 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 cal ed 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 fel ow dies? I can see that when I give orders I shal 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 Estil an vil age 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 vil ages of Estil – a tax Wester’s soldiers saw fit to col ect by slaying Estil an vil agers and emptying their pockets.

Al these stories Randa’s spies reported to their king, and all of them Randa ignored. Now, a Middluns lord who had hidden the majority of his harvest in order to pay a small er tithe than he owed? Here was worthwhile news; here was a problem relevant to the Middluns. Randa sent Katsa to crack the lord’s head open.

Katsa couldn’t say where the notion had come from, but once it pushed its way into her mind, it would not leave.

What might she be capable of – if she acted of her own volition and outside Randa’s domain? It was something she thought about, something to distract herself as she broke fingers for Randa and twisted men’s arms from their sockets.

And the more she considered the question, the more urgent it became, until she thought she would blaze up and burn from the frustration of not doing it.

In her sixteenth year she brought the idea to Raffin. “It just might work,” he said. “I’ll help you, of course.” Next she went to Oll . Oll was skeptical, even alarmed. He was used to bringing his information to Randa so Randa could decide what action to take. But he saw her side of it eventual y, slowly, once he understood that Katsa was determined to do this thing with or without him, and once he convinced himself that it would do the king no harm not to know every move his spymaster made.

In her very first mission, Katsa intercepted a small company of midnight looters that the Estil an king had set on his own people, and sent them fleeing into the hil s. It was the happiest and headiest moment of her life.

Next Katsa and Oll rescued a number of Westeran boys enslaved in a Nanderan iron mine. One or two more escapades and the news of their missions began to trickle into useful channels. Some of Oll’s fel ow spies joined the cause, and one or two underlords at Randa’s court, like Giddon.

Ol ’s wife, Bertol, and other women of the castle. They established regular meetings that took place in secluded rooms. There was an atmosphere of adventure at the meetings, of dangerous freedom. It felt like play, too wonderful, Katsa thought sometimes, to be real. Except that it was real.

They didn’t just talk about subversion; they planned it and carried it out.

Inevitably over time they attracted all ies outside the court. The virtuous among Randa’s borderlords, who were tired of sitting around while neighboring vil ages were plundered. Lords from the other kingdoms, and their spies. And bit by bit, the people – innkeepers, blacksmiths, farmers.

Everyone was tired of the fool kings. Everyone was will ing to take some small risk to lessen the damage of their ambition and disorder and lawlessness.

Tonight, in her camp on the Estil an border, Katsa blinked at the sky, wide awake, and thought about how large the Council had become, how fast it had spread, like one of the vines in Randa’s forest.

It was out of her control now. Missions were carried out in the name of the Council in places she’d never been, without her supervision, and all of it had become dangerous. One careless word spoken by the child of some innkeeper, one unlucky encounter across the world between two people she’d never met, and everything would come crashing down. Her missions would end, Randa would see to it. And then, once again, she would be no more than the king’s strongarm.

She shouldn’t have trusted the strange Lienid.

Katsa crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the stars. She would like to take her horse and race around the hil s in circles. That would calm her mind, tire her out. But it would tire her horse as well, and she wouldn’t leave Oll and Giddon alone. And besides, one didn’t do such things.

It wasn’t normal.

She snorted, and then listened to make sure that no one woke. Normal. She wasn’t normal. A girl Graced with killing, a royal thug? A girl who didn’t want the husbands Randa pushed on her, perfectly handsome and thoughtful men, a girl who panicked at the thought of a baby at her breast, or clinging to her ankles.

She wasn’t natural.

If the Council were discovered, she would escape to a place where she wouldn’t be found. Lienid, or Monsea. She’d live in a cave, in a forest.

She’d kill anyone who found her and recognized her.

She wouldn’t relinquish the small amount of control she’d taken over her life.

She must sleep.

Sleep, Katsa, she told herself. You need to sleep, to keep your strength.

And suddenly tiredness swept over her, and she was asleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

In the morning they dressed like themselves, Giddon in traveling clothes befitting a Middluns underlord, and Oll in his captain’s uniform. Katsa changed into a blue tunic lined with the orange silk of Randa’s courts, and the matching trousers she wore to perform Randa’s errands, a costume to which he consented only because she was abusive to any dresses she wore while riding. Randa didn’t like to think of his Graceling kill er doling out punishment in torn and muddy skirts. It was undignified.

Their business in Estil was with an Estil an borderlord who had arranged to purchase lumber from the southern forests of the Middluns. He had paid the agreed price, but then he’d cleared more than the agreed number of trees.