“I didn’t hurt him,” she said. “That is, I knocked him unconscious. But I didn’t injure him.” She put her knife and fork down, and looked from Giddon to Oll. “I couldn’t. He more than paid for his crime in gold. I couldn’t hurt him.”
They watched her for a moment. Giddon’s eyes dropped to his plate. Oll cleared his throat. “Perhaps the Council work has put us in touch with our better natures,” he said.
Katsa picked up her knife and fork, cut into her mutton, and thought about that. She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed, green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as the vessel of the king’s fury.
But then, it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.
A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
Perhaps she wouldn’t recognize her own nature after all.
There were too many questions, and too few answers, at this dinner table in Giddon’s castle. She would like to be traveling with Raffin, or Po, rather than Oll and Giddon; they would have answers, of one kind or another.
She must guard against using her Grace in anger. This was where her nature’s struggle lay.
———
After dinner, she went to Giddon’s archery range, hoping the thunk of arrows into a target would calm her mind.
There, he found her.
She had wanted to be by herself. But when Giddon stepped out of the shadows, tall and quiet, she wished they were in a great hall with hundreds of people. A party even, she in a dress and horrible shoes. A dance. Any place other than alone with Giddon, where no one would stumble upon them and no one would interrupt.
“You’re shooting arrows at a target in the dark,” Giddon said.
She lowered her bow. She supposed this was one of his criticisms. “Yes,” she said, for she could think of no other response.
“Are you as good a shot in the dark as you are in the light?”
“Yes,” she said, and he smiled, which made her nervous. If he was going to be pleasant, then she feared where this was heading; she would much prefer him to be arrogant and critical, and unpleasant, if they must be alone together.
“There’s nothing you cannot do, Katsa.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
But he seemed determined not to argue. He smiled again and leaned against the wooden railing that separated her lane from the others. “What do you think will happen at Randa’s court tomorrow?” he asked.
“Truly, I don’t know,” Katsa said. “Randa will be very angry.”
“I don’t like that you’re protecting me from his anger, Katsa. I don’t like it at all.”
“I’m sorry, Giddon, as I’m sorry for the cut on your neck. Shall we return to the castle?” She lifted the strap of the quiver over her head, and set it on the ground. He watched her, quietly, and a small panic began to stir in her chest.
“You should let me protect you,” he said.
“You can’t protect me from the king. It would be fatal to you, and a waste of your energies. Let’s go back to the castle.”
“Marry me,” he said, “and our marriage will protect you.”
Well then, he had said it, as Po had predicted, and it hit her like one of Po’s punches to the stomach. She didn’t know where to look; she couldn’t stand still. She put her hand to her head, she put it to the railing. She willed herself to think.
“Our marriage wouldn’t protect me,” she said. “Randa wouldn’t pardon me simply because I married.”
“But he would be more lenient,” Giddon said. “Our engagement would offer him an alternative. It would be dangerous for him to try to punish you, and he knows that. If we say we’re to be married, then he can send us away from court; he can send us here, and he’ll be out of your reach, and you out of his. And there will be some pretense of good feeling between you.”
And she would be married, and to Giddon. She would be his wife, the lady of his house. She’d be charged with entertaining his wretched guests. Expected to hire and dismiss his servants, based on their skill with a pastry, or some such nonsense. Expected to bear him children, and stay at home to love them. She would go to his bed at night, Giddon’s bed, and lie with a man who considered a scratch to her face an affront to his person. A man who thought himself her protector – her protector when she could outduel him if she used a toothpick to his sword.
She breathed it away, breathed away the fury. He was a friend, and loyal to the Council. She wouldn’t speak what she thought. She would speak what Raffin had told her to speak.
“Giddon,” she said. “Surely you’ve heard I don’t intend to marry.”
“But would you refuse a suitable proposal? And you must admit, it seems a solution to your problem with the king.”
“Giddon.” He stood before her, his face even, his eyes warm. So confident. He didn’t imagine she could refuse him.
And perhaps that was forgivable, for perhaps no other woman would. “Giddon. You need a wife who will give you children. I’ve never wished children. You must marry a woman who wishes babies.”
“You’re not an unnatural woman, Katsa. You can fight as other women can’t, but you’re not so different from other women. You’ll want babies. I’m certain of it.”
She hadn’t expected to have such an immediate opportunity to practice containing her temper. For he deserved a thumping, to knock his certainty out of his head and onto the ground where it belonged. “I can’t marry you, Giddon. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s only to do with me. I won’t marry, not anyone, and I won’t bear any man children.”
He stared at her then, and his face changed. She knew that look on Giddon’s face, the sarcastic curl of his lip and the glint in his eye. He was beginning to hear her.
“I don’t think you’ve considered what you’re saying, Katsa. Do you expect ever to receive a more attractive proposal?”
“It’s nothing to do with you, Giddon. It’s only to do with me.”
“Do you imagine there are others who would form an interest in a lady killer?”
“Giddon – ”
“You’re hoping the Lienid will ask for your hand.” He pointed at her, his face mocking. “You prefer him, for he’s a prince, and I’m only a lord.”
Katsa threw her arms in the air. “Giddon, of all the preposterous – ”
“He won’t ask you,” Giddon said, “and if he did you’d be a fool to accept. He’s about as trustworthy as Murgon.”
“Giddon, I assure you – ”
“Nor is he honorable,” Giddon said. “A man who fights you as he does is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug.”
She froze. She stared at Giddon and didn’t even see his finger jabbing in the air, his puffed-up face. Instead she saw Po, sitting on the floor of the practice room, using the exact words Giddon had just used. Before Giddon had used them. “Giddon. Have you spoken those words to Po?”
“Katsa, I’ve never even had a conversation with him when you were not present.”
“What about to anyone else? Have you spoken those words to anyone else?”
“Of course not. If you think I waste my time – ”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, I’m certain. What does it matter? If he asked me, I would not be afraid to tell him what I think.”
She stared at Giddon, disbelieving, defenseless against the realization that trickled into her mind and clicked into place. She put her hand to her throat. She couldn’t catch her breath. She asked the question she felt she had to ask, and cringed against the answer she knew she would receive.
“Have you had those thoughts before? Had you thought those things, while you were in his presence?”
“That I don’t trust him? That he’s an opportunist and a thug? I think of it every time I look at him.”