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“The Lienid honor the Graced.” Well, and that was a novel idea. She hadn’t known that anyone honored the Graced.
Could her Grace be survival?
There was no helping her tears. For they would leave Po behind, to fend for himself and keep himself alive by hiding, though he couldn’t even walk unassisted.
I won’t die, Katsa. I won’t die, and we’ll meet again.”
“There’s no shame in crawling when one can’t walk. And swimming requires less balance.”
They sat together companionably, the child and the lion killer,
The lie told was that the Lienid prince was dead, killed by Leck’s guards when he’d tried to murder the Monsean king. Katsa supposed this lie was a waste of her breath. The opportunity for the family to speak of it would never arise. But when she could, she would make Po out to be dead. The more people who thought him dead, the fewer people would think to seek him out and do him harm.
“What’s this you’re bringing aboard, Jem?”
Jem! Thats my character name!
“It’s very rare for a Lienid to give away one of his rings, and almost unheard of for him to give away the ring of his own identity. To give that ring is to forsake his own identity. Princess Bitterblue, your lady has around her neck the ring of the Seventh Prince of Lienid. If Prince Po had truly given her that ring, it would mean that he’d abdicated his princehood. He’d no longer be a prince of Lienid. He’d make her a princess and give her his castle and his inheritance.”
Katsa reached to her breast and touched the circle of gold. She was thankful, after all, for the power it gave her, if that power would help her to serve Bitterblue.
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.
“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,
King Leck of Monsea.
WHAT?!
In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.
But it was because she’d used a dagger—a dagger—to stop someone talking.
“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,
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.
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.
And if the people living in the towns and traveling the roads did not yet know the details of Leck’s death, or suspect his treachery, at least it began to be understood in Monsea that Bitterblue was safe, Bitterblue was well, and Bitterblue was queen.
and there, he was there, standing straight, eyes glimmering, mouth twitching, and the path he’d plowed through the snow stretching behind him.
This wasn’t Po; this was a stranger; and there was something missing here that had been there before. She reached into the neck of her coat and pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out to him.
My home suits you,” he said, with a bitterness that stung her, and that she couldn’t understand.
She watched as he climbed into the mountains, and away from her.
Katsa watched Po withdraw. He ate little. He sank into silence, unhappiness in the lines of his face.
And of course, if alone was what he needed, alone was what she would give. But—and she thought this might be unfair, but still she decided it—she was going to require proof. He was going to have to convince her, convince her utterly, that solitude was his need. Only then would she leave him to his strange anguish.
She saw it happen; she saw his eyes empty. She whispered. “Po. Are you blind?”
“Clarity,” he said. “My thoughts cleared. There was no light in the cave; there was nothing to see. And yet I sensed the cave with my Grace, so vividly.
settled over him. And Katsa thought she understood the rest. Po had held the notion of Leck close to himself; Leck had given him a reason to reach for his strength. He’d driven himself toward health and balance. And then they’d returned to him with the happy news that Leck was dead. Po was left without a reason. Unhappiness had choked him once again.
“I’ve no right to feel sorry for myself,” he said to her one day, when they’d gone out into a quiet snowfall to fetch water. “I see everything. I see things I shouldn’t see. I’m wallowing in self-pity, when I’ve lost nothing.”
“You’ve lost something,” she said, “and you’ve every right to feel sorrow for what you’ve lost. They’re not the same, sight and your Grace. Your Grace shows you the form of things, but it doesn’t show you beauty. You’ve lost beauty.”
“This is very good,” she said. “This is some excellent self-pity.”
As if he were reconnecting with her, slowly, and pulling her back into his thoughts.
“It’s easy, Katsa. It’s as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.
He was smiling still, and Katsa couldn’t bear it, because it was the smallest and the saddest smile in all the world. But as he raised his fingers to touch her face, she saw that he was wearing his ring.
KATSA FOUND HIM changed as an opponent—less because of the sight he’d lost than because of the sensitivity he’d gained with his growing Grace.
And then she swung the door open and almost sat down on the floor in astonishment, because before her in the hallway stood Raffin.
“I’ll go back to the mountains with Po after this.” It was all she said of her plans, because for the moment it was all she knew.
“At the coronation Skye accused me of refusing to marry you,” Po said; and now she heard a smile in his voice. “He was quite indignant about it.” Katsa sighed. “Oll came to me with the same point. He thinks it’s dangerous for us to leave each other so much freedom and make these vague plans
“It’s all right, you know. Other people don’t have to understand.”
Your story about a narcissistic, cowardly, insecure, cruel king who has the magical ability to tell lies that people believe may, unfortunately, turn out to be a fable for your times, as such stories often do. Cruelty is never new; but also, heroism is real. As you see the people in the real world around you finding their voices and their strength in opposition to cruelty and thoughtlessness, you will want to write more characters who are doing the same. Maybe it can become a positive feedback loop?
