“I can’t deny that, Lady Princess. No one would know that better than you, or Prince Po. I imagine the two of you could whip a whole troop of children into a decent army.”
A vision of Po, dizzy and unsteady on his feet, flashed into Katsa’s mind. She pushed it away. She went to check on Bear and focused her thoughts on Bitterblue’s next drill.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Katsa was in the riggings with Red when she first saw Lienid. It was just how Po had described it; and it was unreal, like something out of a tapestry, or a song. Dark cliffs rose from the sea, snow-covered fields atop them. Rising from the fields a pillar of rock, and atop the rock, a city. Gleaming so bright that at first Katsa was sure it was made of gold.
As the ship drew closer she saw that she wasn’t so wrong. The buildings of the city were brown sandstone, yellow marble, and white quartz that sparkled with the light from sky and water. And the domes and turrets of the structure that rose above the others and sprawled across the skyline were, in fact, gold: Ror’s castle and Po’s childhood home. So big and so bright that Katsa hung from the riggings with her mouth hanging open. Red laughed at her and yelled down to Patch that one thing, at least, stilled the Lady Princess’s climbing and scrambling.
“Land ho!” he called then, and men up and down the deck cheered. Red slithered down, but Katsa stayed in the riggings and watched Ror City grow larger before her. She could make out the road that spiraled from the base of the pillar up to the city, and the platforms, too, rising from fields to city on ropes too thin for her eyes to discern. When the ship skirted the southeast edge of Lienid and headed north, she swung around and kept the city in her sight until it disappeared. It hurt her eyes, almost, Ror City; and it didn’t surprise her that Po should come from a place that shone.
Or a land so dramatically beautiful. The ship wound around the island kingdom, north and then west, and Katsa barely blinked. She saw beaches white with sand, and sometimes with snow. Mountains disappearing into storm clouds.
Towns of stone built into stone and hanging, camouflaged, above the sea. Trees on a cliff, stark and leafless, black against a winter sky.
“Po trees,” Patch said to her when she pointed them out. “Did our prince tell you? The leaves turn silver and gold in the fall. They were beautiful two months ago.”
“They’re beautiful now.”
“I suppose. But Lienid is gray in the winter. The other seasons are an explosion of color. You’ll see, Lady Princess.”
Katsa glanced at him in surprise, and then wondered why she should be surprised. She would see, if she stayed here long enough, and likely she’d be here some time. Her plans once they reached Po’s castle were vague. She would explore the building, learn its hiding places, and fortify it. She would set a guard, with whatever staff she found there.
She would think and plan and wait to hear something of Po or Leck. And just as she fortified the castle, she would fortify her mind, against any news she heard that might carry the poison of Leck’s lies.
“I know what you’ve asked us to do, Lady Princess,” Patch said beside her.
This time she looked at him with true surprise. He watched the passing trees, his face grave.
“Captain Faun told me,” he said. “She’s told a few of us – a very few. She wants a number of us on her side when the time comes to tell the rest.”
“And are you on her side, then?” Katsa asked.
“She brought me to her side, eventually.”
“I’m glad,” Katsa said. “And I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your doing, Lady Princess. It’s the doing of the monster who’s the King of Monsea.”
A light snow began to fall. Katsa reached her hands out to meet it.
“What do you think is wrong with him, Lady Princess?” Patch asked.
Katsa caught a snowflake in the middle of her palm. “What do you mean, wrong with him?”
“Well, why does it pleasure him to hurt people?” Katsa shrugged. “His Grace makes it so easy.”
“But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people,” Patch said. “It doesn’t mean they do.”
“I don’t know,” Katsa said, thinking of Randa and Murgon and the other kings and their senseless acts. “It seems to me that a fair number of people are happy to be as cruel as their power allows, and no one’s more powerful than Leck. I don’t know why he does it, I only know we need to stop him.”
“Do you think Leck knows where you are, Lady Princess?”
Katsa watched flakes melting into the sea. She sighed.
“We crossed paths with very few people,” she said, “once we left Monsea. And we told no one our destination, until we boarded this ship. But – he saw both of us, Patch, both me and Po, and of course he recognized us. There are only a few places we could hide the child. He’ll look for her here eventually. I must find a place to hide, in the castle or on the lands. Or even someplace in the Lienid wilderness.”
“The weather will be harsh, Lady Princess, until spring.”
“Yes. Well, I may not be able to keep her comfortable. But I’ll keep her safe.”
———
Po had said his castle was small, more akin to a large house than a castle. But after seeing the way Ror’s castle filled the sky, Katsa wondered if Po’s scale of measure might differ from other people’s. Randa’s castle was large. Ror’s was gargantuan. Where Po’s fit in was yet to be seen.
When she finally did see Po’s castle, she was pleased. It was small, or at least it seemed it from her position in the riggings of the ship far below. It was simply built of whitewashed stone, the balconies and the window frames painted a blue to match the sky, and only a single square tower, rising somewhere from the back, to suggest it was more than a house. Its position, of course, was far from simple, and its position pleased Katsa even more than its simplicity. A cliff reached up and out from the water, and the castle balanced at the cliff’s very edge. It looked as if it might tumble forward at any moment, as if the wind might find purchase in some crack in the foundations, and tip the castle, creaking and screaming, over the drop and into the sea. She could understand why the balconies were dangerous in winter. Some of them hung over empty space.
Below the castle, the sea threw itself against the base of the cliff. But there was one nook in the rock, one small inlet where water broke and foamed onto sand. A tiny beach. And a stairway leading up from the beach, rising against the side of the cliff, turning back on itself, disappearing occasionally, and climbing finally up the side of the castle and onto one of those dizzying balconies.
“Where will we dock?” she asked the captain when she’d scrambled down to the deck.
“There’s a bay on the other side of this rise of rock, some distance beyond the beach. We’ll dock there. A path leads up from the bay and away from the castle – you’ll think you’re going the wrong way, Lady Princess – but then it loops back, and takes you up a great hill to the castle’s front. There may be snow, but the path is kept clear in case the prince returns.”
“You speak as if you know it well.”
“I captained a smaller ship a few years back, Lady Princess, a supply ship. The castles of Lienid are all beautifully situated, but believe me when I tell you they’re none of them easy to supply. It’s a steep path to the door.”
“How large a staff does he keep?”
“I’d expect very few people, Lady Princess. And I’ll remind you that it’s your castle at the moment, and your servants, though you continue to refer to them as his.”
Yes, this she knew; and it was one of the reasons she wasn’t looking forward to her first encounter with the inhabitants of the castle. The appearance of Lady Katsa of the Middluns, renowned thug, in possession of Po’s ring; the absurd, tragic story she had to tell about Leck and Ashen; and her subsequent intentions to turn the castle into a fortress and cut off contact with the outside world. Katsa had a feeling it wouldn’t go smoothly.