Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(20)
Author: Kristin Cashore

She looked up at him then, her eyes on fire, and his face softened. “What a thing for me to say. Of course you don’t need to imagine it.”

No, for it was her reality. She hadn’t had the luxury of hiding her Grace.

“We can’t blame him for not tell ing us sooner,” Raffin said. “To be honest, I’m touched that he told us at all. He told me just after you left. He has some ideas about the kidnapping, Kat.”

Yes, as he must have ideas about a great many things he was in no position to know anything about. A mind reader could never be short on ideas. “What are his ideas?”

“Why don’t you let him tell you about it?”

“I don’t crave the company of a mind reader.”

“He’s leaving tomorrow, Kat.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean, he’s leaving?”

“He’s leaving the court,” Raffin said, “for good. He’s going to Sunder, and then Monsea, possibly. He hasn’t worked out the details.”

Her eyes swam with tears. She seemed unable to control this strange water that flowed into her eyes. She stared at her hands, and one tear plopped into her palm.

“I think I’ll send him,” Raffin said, “to tell you about it.”

He climbed from the bed and came to her. He bent down and kissed her forehead. “Dear Katsa,” he said, and then he left the room.

She stared at the checked pattern of her marble floor and wondered how she could feel so desolate that her eyes fil ed with tears. She couldn’t remember crying, not once in her life. Not until this fool Lienid had come to her court, and lied to her, and then announced that he was leaving.

———

He hovered just inside the doorway; he seemed unsure whether to come closer or keep his distance. She didn’t know what she wanted, either; she only knew she wanted to remain calm and not look at him and not think any thoughts for him to steal. She stood, crossed into her dining room, went to the window, and looked out. The courtyard was empty, and yel ow in the light of the lowering sun. She felt him moving into the entrance behind her.

“Forgive me, Katsa,” he said. “I beg you to forgive me.”

Wel , and that was easily answered. She did not forgive him.

The trees in Randa’s garden were stillgreen, and some of the flowers stillin bloom. But soon the leaves would turn and fall. The gardeners would come with their great rakes, and scrape the leaves from the marble floor, and carry them away in wheelbarrows. She didn’t know where they carried them. To the vegetable gardens, she guessed, or to the fields. They were industrious, the gardeners.

She did not forgive him.

She heard him move a step closer. “How… how did you know?” he asked. “If you would tell me?”

She rested her forehead on the glass pane. “And why don’t you use your Grace to find the answer to that?”

He paused. “I could,” he said, “possibly, if you were thinking about it specifical y. But you’re not, and I can’t wander around inside you and retrieve any information I want. Any more than I can stop my Grace from showing me things I don’t want.”

She didn’t answer.

“Katsa, all I know right now is that you’re angry, furious, from the top of your head to your toes; and that I’ve hurt you, and that you don’t forgive me. Or trust me. That’s all I know at this moment. And my Grace only confirms what I see with my own eyes.”

She sighed sharply, and spoke into the windowpane. “Giddon told me he didn’t trust you. And when he told me, he used the same words you’d used before, the same words exactly. And” – she waved her hand in the air – “there were other hints. But Giddon’s words made it clear.”

He was closer now. Leaning against the table, most likely, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on her back.

She focused on the view outside. Two ladies crossed the courtyard below her, on each other’s arms. The curls of their hair sat gathered at the tops of their heads and bobbed up and down.

“I haven’t been very careful with you,” he said. “Careful to hide it. I’d go so far as to say I’ve been careless at times.”

He paused, and his voice was quiet, as if he was talking down to his boots. “It’s because I’ve wanted you to know.”

And that did not absolve him. He had taken her thoughts without tell ing her, and he had wanted to tell her, and that did not begin to absolve him.

“I couldn’t tell you, Katsa, not possibly,” he said, and she swung around to face him.

“Stop it! Stop that! Stop responding to my thoughts!”

“I won’t hide it from you, Katsa! I won’t hide it anymore!”

He wasn’t leaning against the table, hands in pockets. He was standing, clutching his hair. His face – she would not look at his face. She turned away, turned back to the window.

“I’m not going to hide it from you anymore, Katsa,” he said again. “Please. Let me explain it. It’s not as bad as you think.”

“It’s easy for you to say,” she said. “You’re not the one whose thoughts are not your own.”

“Almost all of your thoughts are your own,” he said. “My Grace only shows me how you stand in relation to me.

Where you are nearby physical y, and what you’re doing; and any thoughts or feelings or instincts you have regarding me. I-I suppose it’s meant to be a kind of self-preservation,” he finished lamely. “Anyway, it’s why I can fight you. I sense the movement of your body, without seeing it. And more to the point, I feel the energy of your intentions toward me. I know every move you intend to make against me, before you make it.”

She almost couldn’t breathe at that extraordinary statement. She wondered vaguely if this was how it felt to her victims, to be kicked in the chest.

“I know when someone wants to hurt me, and how,” he said. “I know if a person looks on me kindly, or if he trusts me. I know if a person doesn’t like me. I know when someone intends to deceive me.”

“As you’ve deceived me,” she said, “about being a mind reader.”

He continued doggedly. “Yes, that’s true. But all you’ve told me about your struggles with Randa, Katsa, I needed to hear from your mouth. all you’ve told me about Raffin, or Giddon. When I met you in Murgon’s courtyard,” he said.

“Do you remember? When I met you, I didn’t know why you were there. I couldn’t look into your mind and know you were in the process of rescuing my grandfather from Murgon’s dungeons. I wasn’t even sure my grandfather was in the dungeons, for I hadn’t gotten close enough to him to sense his physical presence yet. Nor had I spoken with Murgon; I’d learned nothing yet from Murgon’s lies. I didn’t know you’d attacked every guard in the castle. all I knew for sure was that you didn’t know who I was, and you didn’t know whether to trust me, but you didn’t want to kill me, because I was Lienid, and possibly because of something to do with some other Lienid, though I couldn’t be certain who, or how he factored into it. And also that you – I don’t know how to explain it, but you felt trustworthy to me. That’s all, that’s all I knew. It was on the basis of that information that I decided to trust you.”

“It must be convenient,” she said bitterly, “to know if another person is trustworthy. We wouldn’t be here now if I had that capability.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t tell you how sorry. I’ve hated not tell ing you. It’s rankled me every day since we became friends.”

“We are not friends.” She whispered it into the glass of the window.

“If you’re not my friend, then I have no friends.”

“Friends don’t lie,” she said.

“Friends try to understand,” he said. “How could I have become your friend without lying? How much have I risked to tell you and Raffin the truth? What would you have done differently, Katsa, if this were your Grace and your secret?

Hidden yourself in a hole and dared to burden no one with your grievous friendship? I will have friends, Katsa. I will have a life, even though I carry this burden.”

He stopped for a moment, his voice rough and choked, and Katsa fought against his distress, fought to keep it from touching her. She found that she was gripping the window frame very hard.

“You would have me friendless, Katsa,” he finished quietly. “You would have my Grace control every aspect of my life and shut me off from every happiness.”

She didn’t want to hear these words, words that cal ed to her sympathy, to her understanding. She who had hurt so many with her own Grace, and been reviled because of it. She who stillstruggled to keep her Grace from mastering her, and who, like him, had never asked for the power it gave her.

“Yes,” he said, “I didn’t ask for this. I would turn it off for you, if I could.”

Rage then, rage again, because she couldn’t even feel sympathy without him knowing it. This was madness. She could not comprehend the madness of this situation. How did his mother relate to him? Or his grandfather? How could anyone?

She took a breath and tried to consider it, piece by piece.

“Your fighting,” she said, her eyes on the darkening courtyard. “You expect me to believe your fighting isn’t Graced?”

“I’m an exceptional natural fighter,” he said. “Al of my brothers are. The royal family is well -known in Lienid for hand fighting. But my Grace – it’s an enormous advantage in a fight, to anticipate every move your opponent makes against you. Combine with that my immediate sense of your body, a sense that goes beyond sight – you can understand why no one has ever beaten me, save you.”

She thought about that and found she couldn’t believe it. “But you’re too good. You must have a fighting Grace as well . You couldn’t fight me so well if you didn’t.”

“Katsa,” he said, “think about it. You’re five times the fighter I am. When we fight, you’re holding back – don’t tell me you aren’t, because I know you are – and I’m not holding back, not a bit. And you can do anything you want to me, and I can’t hurt you – ”

“It hurts when you strike me – ”

“It hurts you for only an instant, and besides, if I hit you it’s only because you’ve let me, because you’re too busy wrenching my arm out of its socket to care that I’m hitting you in the stomach. How long do you think it would take you to kill me, or break my bones, if you decided to?”