Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(8)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Katsa had had no reason to interact with a woman servant.

But one day Helda had come when Oll was away and Katsa was alone in the practice rooms. And when the child had paused to set up a new dummy, Helda had spoken.

“In court they say you’re dangerous, My Lady.”

Katsa considered the old woman for a moment, her gray hair and gray eyes, and her soft arms, folded over a soft stomach. The woman held her gaze, as no one other than Raffin, Oll , or the king did. Then Katsa shrugged, hoisted a sack of grain onto her shoulder, and hung it from a hook on a wooden post standing in the center of the practice-room floor.

“The first man you kill ed, My Lady,” Helda said. “That cousin. Did you mean to kill him?”

It was a question no one had ever actual y asked her. Again the girl looked into the face of the woman, and again the woman held her eyes.

Katsa sensed that this question was inappropriate coming from a servant. But she was so unused to being talked to that she didn’t know the right way to proceed.

“No,” Katsa said. “I only meant to keep him from touching me.”

“Then you are dangerous, My Lady, to people you don’t like. But perhaps you’d be safe as a friend.”

“It’s why I spend my days in this practice room,” Katsa said.

“Mastering your Grace,” Helda said. “Yes, all Gracelings must do so.”

This woman knew something about the Graces, and she wasn’t afraid to say the word. It was time for Katsa to begin her exercises again, but she paused, hoping the woman would say something more.

“My Lady,” HeIda said, “if I may ask you a nosy question?” Katsa waited. She couldn’t think of a question more nosy than the one the woman had already asked.

“Who are your servants, My Lady?” Helda asked.

Katsa wondered if this woman was trying to embarrass her. She drew herself up and looked the woman straight in the face, daring her to laugh or smile. “I don’t keep servants. When a servant is assigned to me, she general y chooses to leave the service of the court.”

Helda didn’t smile or laugh. She merely looked back at Katsa, studied her for a moment. “Have you any female caretakers, My Lady?”

“I have none.”

“Has anyone spoken to you of a woman’s bleedings, My Lady, or of how it is with a man and a woman?”

Katsa didn’t know what she meant, and she had a feeling this old woman could tell . still, Helda didn’t smile or laugh. She looked Katsa up and down.

“What’s your age, My Lady?”

Katsa raised her chin. “I’m nearly eleven.”

“And they were going to let you learn it on your own,” Helda said, “and probably tear through the castle like a wild thing because you didn’t know what attacked you.”

Katsa raised her chin another notch. “I always know what attacks me.”

“My child,” Helda said, “My Lady, would you all ow me to serve you, on occasion? When you need service, and when my presence is not required in the nurseries?”

Katsa thought it must be very bad to work in the nurseries, if this woman wished to serve her instead. “I don’t need servants,” she said, “but I can have you transferred from the nurseries if you’re unhappy there.”

Katsa thought she caught the hint of a smile. “I’m happy in the nurseries,” Helda said. “Forgive me for contradicting such a one as yourself, My Lady, but you do need a servant, a woman servant. Because you have no mother or sisters.”

Katsa had never needed a mother or sisters or anyone else, either. She didn’t know what one did with a contradictory servant; she guessed that Randa would go into a rage, but she was afraid of her own rages. She held her breath, clenched her fists, and stood as stillas the wooden post in the center of the room. The woman could say what she wanted. They were only words.

Helda stood and smoothed her dress. “I’ll come to your rooms on occasion, My Lady.”

Katsa made her face like a rock.

“If you ever wish a break from your uncle’s state dinners, you may always join me in my room.”

Katsa blinked. She hated the dinners, with everyone’s sideways glances, and the people who didn’t want to sit near her, and her uncle’s loud voice. Could she really skip them? Could this woman’s company be better?

“I must return to the nurseries, My Lady,” Helda said. “My name is Helda, and I come from the western Middluns.

Your eyes are so very pretty, my dear. Good-bye.”

Helda left before Katsa was able to find her voice. Katsa stared at the door that closed behind her.

“Thank you,” she said, though there was no one to hear, and though she wasn’t sure why her voice seemed to think she was grateful.

———

Katsa sat in the bath and tugged at the knots in her tangle of hair. She heard Helda in the other room, rustling through the chests and drawers, unearthing the earrings and necklaces Katsa had thrown among her silk undergarments and her horrid bone chest supports the last time she’d been required to wear them. Katsa heard Helda muttering and grunting, on her knees most likely, looking under the bed for Katsa’s hairbrush or her dinner shoes.

“What dress shal it be tonight, My Lady?” Helda cal ed out.

“You know I don’t care,” Katsa cal ed back.

There was more muttering in response to this. A moment later Helda came to the door carrying a dress bright as the tomatoes Randa imported from Lienid, the tomatoes that clustered on the vine and tasted as rich and sweet as his chef’s chocolate cake. Katsa raised her eyebrows.

“I’m not going to wear a red dress,” she said.

“It’s the color of sunrise,” Helda said.

“It’s the color of blood,” Katsa said.

Sighing, Helda carried the dress from the bathing room. “It would look stunning, My Lady,” she cal ed, “with your dark hair and your eyes.”

Katsa yanked at one of the more stubborn knots in her hair. She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. “If there’s anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I’ll hit him in the face.”

Helda came to the doorway again, this time with her arms ful of a soft green silk. “Is this dul enough for you, My Lady?”

“Have I no grays or browns?”

Helda set her face. “I’m determined that you wear a color, My Lady.”

Katsa scowled. “You’re determined that people notice me.” She held a tangle of hair before her eyes and pulled at it, savagely. “I should like to cut it all off,” she said. “It’s not worth the nuisance.”

Helda put the dress aside and came to sit on the edge of the bath. She lathered her fingers up with soap, and took the tangled hair out of Katsa’s hands. She worked the curls apart, bit by bit, gently.

“If you ran a brush through it once every day while you were traveling, My Lady, this wouldn’t happen.”

Katsa snorted. “Giddon would get a good laugh out of that. My attempts to beautify myself.”

That knot untangled, Helda moved to another. “Don’t you think Lord Giddon finds you beautiful, My Lady?”

“Helda,” Katsa said, “how much time do you suppose I spend wondering which of the gentlemen finds me beautiful?”

“Not enough,” Helda said, nodding emphatical y. A hiccup of laughter rose into Katsa’s throat. Dear Helda. She saw what Katsa was and what she did, and Helda didn’t deny that Katsa was that person. But she couldn’t fathom a lady who didn’t want to be beautiful, who didn’t want a legion of admirers. And so she believed Katsa was both people, though Katsa couldn’t imagine how she reconciled them in her mind.

———

In the great dining hal , Randa presided over a long, high table that might as well have been a stage at the head of the room. Three low tables were arranged around the perimeter to complete the sides of a square, giving the guests an unobstructed view of the king.

Randa was a tal man, tal er even than his son, and broader in the shoulders and the neck. He had Raffin’s yel ow hair and blue eyes, but they weren’t laughing eyes like Raffin’s. They were eyes that assumed you would do what he told you to do, eyes that threatened to bring you unhappiness if he didn’t get what he wanted. It wasn’t that he was unjust, except perhaps to those who wronged him. It was more that he wanted things the way he wanted them, and if things weren’t that way, he might decide that he’d been wronged. And if you were the person responsible – well, then you had reason to fear his eyes.

At dinner he wasn’t fearsome. At dinner he was arrogant and loud. He brought whomever he wanted to sit with him at the high table. Often Raffin, though Randa spoke over him and never cared to hear what he had to say. Rarely Katsa.

Randa kept his distance from her. He preferred to look down on his lady kill er and cal out to her, because his yel ing brought the attention of the entire room to his niece, his prized weapon. And the guests would be frightened, and everything would be as Randa liked it.

Tonight she sat at the table to the right of Randa’s, her usual position. She wore the soft green silk and fought the urge to tear off the sleeves that widened at her wrists and hung over her hands and dragged across her plate if she wasn’t careful. At least this dress covered her br**sts, mostly. Not all of them did. Helda paid her no attention when she gave instructions about her wardrobe.

Giddon sat to her left. The lord to her right, whom she supposed to be the eligible bachelor, was a man not old, but older than Giddon, a small man whose bugged eyes and stretched mouth gave him the appearance of a frog. His name was Davit, and he was a borderlord from the Middluns’ northeast corner, at the border of both Nander and Estil .

His conversation wasn’t bad; he cared a great deal about his land, his farms, his vil ages, and Katsa found it easy to ask questions that he was eager to answer. At first he sat on the farthest edge of his chair and looked at her shoulder and her ear and her hair as they talked, but never her face. But he grew calmer as the dinner progressed and Katsa didn’t bite him; his body relaxed, he settled into his chair, and they spoke easily.

Katsa thought him unusual y good dinner company, this Lord Davit of the northeast. At any rate, he made it easier for her to resist tearing out the hairpins that dug into her scalp.

The Lienid prince was also a distraction, no matter how much she will ed him not to be. He sat across the room from her and was always in the corner of her eye, though she tried not to look at him directly. She felt his eyes on her at times. Bold, he was, and entirely unlike the rest of the guests, who carefully pretended she wasn’t there, as they always did. It occurred to her that it wasn’t just the strangeness of his eyes that disconcerted her. It was that he wasn’t afraid to hold hers. She glanced at him once when he wasn’t looking. He raised his eyes to meet her gaze.