“I was very angry,” she said, “when first he told me. But I have… recovered from my anger.”
It was a woefully inadequate description of her feelings, this Katsa knew. But the queen watched her, and Katsa thought the woman understood some of what she didn’t say.
“Will you marry him?” the queen asked, so plainly that Katsa started again; but this she could answer as plainly.
She looked into the queen’s eyes.
“I won’t ever marry,” she said.
The queen’s forehead creased in puzzlement, but she didn’t say anything. She hesitated, and then spoke. “You saved my son’s life in Monsea,” she said, “and you saved it again today. I’ll never forget it.”
She stood, bent forward, and kissed Katsa’s forehead, and for the third time since this woman’s arrival, Katsa started with surprise. The queen turned and left the room, her skirts sweeping through the doorway. As the door closed behind her, and Katsa stared at the blankness where Po’s mother had been, the image of Leck rose again into her mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Katsa kept to a far corner of the deck as Bear and Red and a number of other men hauled the ropes that swung Leck’s coffin on board. She wished to have nothing to do with it, wished even that the ropes would snap and pitch Leck’s body into the sea, to be torn apart by sea creatures. She climbed up the mast and sat alone in the riggings.
It was a grand procession of royalty that charted a course now to Monsea. For not only was Bitterblue a queen, but Prince Skye and King Ror attended her. His sister’s child, Ror had pointed out, was a child. And even if she weren’t, she returned to an impossible situation. A kingdom deeply under a spell; a kingdom that believed its king to be virtuous and its princess to be ill, weak, possibly even mad. The child queen could not be sent off trippingly to Monsea to announce that she was now in charge, and denounce the dead king an entire kingdom adored. Bitterblue would need authority, and she would need guidance. Both of these Ror could provide.
Ror would send Skye to Po. Silvern, Ror had sent on a different ship to the Middluns, to collect Grandfather Tealiff and bring him home. His remaining sons Ror had sent home to their families and their duties, turning a deaf ear to each son’s insistence that his proper place was in Ror City, managing Ror’s affairs. Ror left his affairs instead to his queen, as he always did when circumstances took him away from his throne. The queen was more than capable.
Katsa watched Ror, day after day, from her place in the riggings. She became familiar with the sound of his laughter, and his good-natured conversation that set the sailors at ease. There was nothing humble or compromising about Ror. He was handsome, like Po, and confident, like Po, and so much more authoritative in his bearing than Po could ever be. But – and this Katsa came gradually to understand – he was not drunk on his power. He might never dream of helping a sailor to haul a rope, but he would stand with the sailor interestedly while the sailor hauled the rope, and ask him questions about the rope, about his work, his home, his mother and father, his cousin who spent a year once fishing in the lakes of Nander. It struck Katsa that here was a thing she’d never encountered: a king who looked at his people, instead of over their heads, a king who saw outside himself.
Katsa took easily to Skye. He climbed occasionally into the riggings, gasping, his gray eyes flying wide with laughter every time the ship plunged into the trough of a wave. He sat near her, never quite as relaxed in his perch as she was in hers, but quiet, content, and good company.
“I thought, after meeting your family, that Po was the only male among you capable of silence,” Katsa said to him once, when they’d sat for some time without speaking.
A smile warmed his face. “I’d jump into an argument quick enough if you wanted one,” he said. “And I have a thousand questions I’d like to ask you. But I figure if you felt like talking – well, you’d be talking, wouldn’t you?
Instead of climbing up here nearly to be hurled to your death every time we crest a wave.”
His company, and the friendly rumble of Ror’s voice below. The small kindnesses of the sailors toward Bitterblue when the girl came onto the cold deck for exercise. Captain Faun, who was so competent and so steady, and who always met Katsa’s eyes with respect. All these things comforted Katsa, and a tough little skin began to stretch across the wound that had opened in her when her dagger had hit Leck.
She found herself thinking of her uncle. How small Randa seemed now, how baseless in his power. How silly that such a person had ever been able to control her.
Control. This was Katsa’s wound: Leck had taken away her control. It had nothing to do with self-condemnation; she couldn’t blame herself for what had happened. How could it not have happened? Leck had been too strong. She could respect a strong opponent, as she’d respected the wildcat and the mountain. But no amount of humility or respect made it any less horrifying to have lost control.
“Forgive me, Katsa,” Skye said once, as they hung together above the sea. “But there’s one question I must ask you.”
She had seen the puzzlement in his eyes at times before. She knew what he was going to ask.
“You’re not my brother’s wife, are you?”
She smiled grimly. “No.”
“Then why do the Lienid on this ship call you Princess?”
She took a breath, to ease the jarring of his question against her wound. She reached into the neck of her coat and pulled the ring out for him to see.
“When he gave it to me,” she said, “he didn’t tell me what it meant. Nor did he tell me why he gave it.”
Skye stared at the ring. His face registered astonishment, then dismay, then a stubborn, self-willed sort of denial.
“He’ll have some rational reason for it,” he said.
“Yes,” Katsa said. “I intend to beat it out of him.”
Skye laughed a short laugh, and lapsed into silence. A crease of worry lingered low on his forehead. And Katsa knew that the tough scar that formed over the ache within her had as much to do with her future lack of control as her past. She could not make Po be well, any more than she had been able to make herself think clearly in Leck’s presence.
Some things were beyond her power, and she had to prepare herself for whatever she found when she reached Po’s cabin at the base of the Monsean mountains.
———
The delay, once the ship had docked in Monport and the party had disembarked, was unbearable. The captain of the Monport guard and the nobles of Leck’s court stationed in Monport had to be summoned and made to understand the incredible truths Ror presented to them. The search for Bitterblue, still under way, had to be called off, as did the instructions to take Katsa alive and Po dead. Ror’s tone on this last point froze into something very cold.
“Has he been found?” Katsa interrupted.
“Has… has who?” the captain of the Monport guard asked, stupidly, his hand to his head, his manner afflicted with a vagueness the Lienid party recognized.
“Have your men found the Lienid prince?” Ror snapped; and then more gently, as the eyes of the captain and the nobles moved confusedly to Skye, “the younger prince. He’s a Graceling, with silver and gold eyes. Has anyone seen him?”
“I don’t believe he’s been seen, Lord King. Yes, I’m quite sure that’s correct. We’ve not found him. Forgive me, Lord King. This story you’ve told… my memory…”
“Yes,” Ror said. “I understand. We must go slowly.”
Katsa could have torn the city down stone by stone, so wild did it make her to go slowly. She began to stalk back and forth behind the Lienid king. She crouched to the floor and grasped her hair. The conversation droned on. It would take hours – hours – for these men to disengage themselves from Leck’s spell, and Katsa couldn’t bear it.
“Perhaps we could see to some horses, Father,” Skye murmured, “and be on our way?”