The captain asked Katsa and Bitterblue one day, as they sat in the galley over a meal, how they’d gotten to Suncliff without being seen.
“We crossed the Monsean peaks into Sunder,” Katsa said, “and traveled through the forests. When we reached the outskirts of Suncliff, we traveled only by night.”
“How did you cross the mountain pass, Lady Princess? Wasn’t it guarded?”
“We didn’t cross at the mountain pass. We took Grella’s Pass.”
The captain peered at Katsa over the cup she’d raised to her face. She set the cup down. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“You crossed Grella’s Pass and kept your fingers and toes let alone your lives? I might believe it of you, Lady Princess, but I can’t believe it of the child.”
“Katsa carried me,” Bitterblue said.
“And we had good weather,” Katsa added.
The captain’s laugh rang out. “It’s no use lying to me about the weather, Lady Princess. It’s snowed in Grella’s Pass every day since summer, and there are few places in the seven kingdoms colder.”
“Nonetheless, it could have been worse the day we crossed.” The captain was still laughing. “If I ever need a protector, Lady Princess, I hope to find you nearby.”
A day or two later, after Katsa had come up from one of the frigid ocean baths she liked to take – the baths that Bitterblue considered further proof she was mad – she sat on Bitterblue’s bunk and peeled away her soaking clothing.
Their quarters were barely big enough for the two bunks they slept in and badly lit by a lantern that swung from the ceiling. Bitterblue brought Katsa a cloth to dry her wet skin and frozen hair. She reached out to touch Katsa’s shoulder.
Katsa looked down and saw, in the wavering light, the lines of white skin that had caught the girl’s attention. The scars, where the claws of the mountain lion had torn her flesh. Lines on her breast, too.
“You’ve healed well,” Bitterblue said. “There’s no question who won that fight.”
“For all that,” Katsa said, “we weren’t evenly matched, and the cat had the advantage. On a different day it would’ve killed me.”
“I wish I had your skill,” Bitterblue said. “I’d like to be able to defend myself against anything.”
It wasn’t the first time Bitterblue had said something like that. And it was only one of countless times Katsa had remembered, with a stab of panic, that Bitterblue was wrong; that in her one and only encounter with Leck, Katsa had been defenseless.
———
Still, Bitterblue didn’t have to be as defenseless as she was. When Patch teased her one day about the knife she wore sheathed at her belt – the same knife, big as her forearm, she’d carried since the day Katsa and Po had found her in Leck’s forest – Katsa decided the time had come to make a threat of Bitterblue. Or as much of a threat as the child could be. How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people – girls, women –
went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.
And so Katsa began to teach the girl. First to feel comfortable with a knife in her hand. To hold it properly, so that it wouldn’t slip from her fingers; to carry it easily, as if it were a natural extension of her arm. This first lesson gave the child more trouble than Katsa had anticipated. The knife was heavy. It was also sharp. It made Bitterblue nervous to carry an open blade across a floor that lurched and dipped. She held the hilt much too tightly, so tightly her arm ached and blisters formed on her palm.
“You fear your own knife,” Katsa said.
“I’m afraid of falling on it,” Bitterblue said, “or hurting someone with it by accident.”
“That’s natural enough. But you’re just as likely to lose control of it if you’re holding it too tightly as too loosely.
Loosen your grip, child. It won’t fall from your fingers if you hold it as I’ve taught you.”
And so the child would relax the hand that held the knife, until the floor tipped again or one of the sailors came near; and then she would forget what Katsa had said and grip the blade again with all her strength.
Katsa changed tactics. She put an end to official lessons, and instead had Bitterblue walk around the ship with the knife in her hand all afternoon for several days. Knife in hand, the child visited the sailors who were her friends, climbed the ladder between decks, ate meals in the galley, and craned her neck to watch Katsa scrambling around in the riggings. At first she sighed often and passed the knife heavily from one hand to the other. But then, after a day or two, it seemed not to bother her so much. A few days more and the knife swung loosely at her side. Not forgotten, for Katsa could see the care she took with the blade when the floor rocked, or when a friend was near. But comfortable in
her hand. Familiar. And now, finally, it was time for the girl to learn how to use the weapon she held.
The next few lessons progressed slowly. Bitterblue was persistent and ferociously determined; but her muscles were untrained, unused to the motions Katsa now expected of her.
Katsa was hard-pressed sometimes to know what to teach her. There was some use in teaching the child to block or deliver blows in the traditional sense – some, but not much. She would never last long in a battle if she tried to fight by the usual rules. “What you must do,” Katsa told her, “is inflict as much pain as possible and watch for an opening.”
“And ignore your own pain,” Jem said, “as best you can.” Jem helped with the lessons, as did Bear, and any other of the sailors who could find the time. Some days the lessons served as mealtime distractions for the men in the galley, or on fine days as diversions in the corner of the deck. The sailors didn’t all understand why a young girl should be learning to fight. But none of them laughed at her efforts, even when the methods Katsa encouraged her to use were as undignified as biting, scratching, and hair pulling.
“You don’t need to be strong to drive your thumbs into a man’s eyeballs,” Katsa said, “but it does a lot of damage.”
“That’s disgusting,” Bitterblue said.
“Someone your size doesn’t have the luxury of fighting cleanly, Bitterblue.”
“I’m not saying I won’t do it. I’m only saying it’s disgusting.” Katsa tried to hide her smile. “Yes, well. I suppose it is disgusting.”
She showed Bitterblue all of the soft places to stab a man if she wanted to kill him – throat, neck, stomach, eyes –
the easy places that required less force. She taught Bitterblue to hide a small knife in her boot and how to whip it out quickly.
How to drive a knife with both hands and how to hold one in either hand. How to keep from dropping a knife in the bedlam of an attack, when everything was happening so fast your mind couldn’t keep up.
“That’s the way to do it,” Red called out one day when Bitterblue had elbowed Bear successfully in the groin and bent him over double, groaning.
“And now that he’s distracted,” Katsa said, “what will you do?”
“Stab him in the neck with my knife,” Bitterblue said. “Good girl.”
“She’s a plucky little thing,” Red said, approvingly.
She wa s a plucky little thing. So little, so completely little, that Katsa knew, as every one of these sailors must know, how much luck she would need if she were to defend herself from an attacker. But what she was learning would give her a fighting chance. The confidence she was gaining would also help. These men, these sailors who stood on the side shouting their encouragement – they helped, too, more than they could know.
“Of course, she’ll never need these skills,” Red added. “A princess of Monsea will always have bodyguards.”
Katsa didn’t say the first words that came to her mind. “It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them,” she said.