KATSA PROVED TO BE a marvelous opponent. Po couldn't get to her, but at the same time she couldn't hit him where she meant to, or as hard as she wanted.
Po was fast, faster than any fighter in Lienid with the aid of his Grace, yet he was slow compared to Katsa. He still had his strength, and the challenge lay in how Po could brainstorm ahead of her intentions, for he was still much stronger than her. He had to focus on reacting a second before her, to block and twist before Katsa landed her punches, so that he could afford a hit of his own when she missed. It was no easy feat, for Katsa's thoughts came at what felt like the speed of light before her body moved into them. And when she did let him land his own attacks, it was because she was too busy wrenching his arm out of its socket to have paid any attention to the pain…
But Po was determined. She couldn't knock him from his feet, either, despite her sped, but she also couldn't trap him when their fight had devolved into a wrestling match on the floor. He was much stronger than she, and for the first time in both of their lives, they found her lesser strength and his lesser speed to be a disadvantage against each other. No one had ever gotten close enough to both of them for it to have mattered, before this. Grandfather Tealiff had been right: Po had indeed met his match.
The more they fought together, the more Po became familiar with how Katsa's body moved, how she weaved before she ducked, how she pounced like a wildcat before she tried to get him to lose his balance. Po even came to know the hurried stomping she walked through the court with. Po saw the way that their fighting opened her senses and made her alive, and even though it was like clockwork that worked every time, Po could not help but admire how beautiful it was, that one could like fighting so much.
In her beauty, Katsa also noticed things. She noticed how he was so finely tuned to his surroundings, and to her movements; and that was also part of the challenge she had in sneaking up on him or surprising him with a kick that not even Oll, who had trained Katsa since the very beginning, would have seen coming. Katsa noticed begrudgingly that he always seemed to know what she was doing, even when she was behind him. Po had not meant to mess up so much, but with Katsa… some things were hard to keep secret when they came so naturally, in the light of the practice room and in their laughter.
It was becoming a bigger problem when Katsa decided to confront him. "I'll grant you don't have night vision if you'll grant you have eyes in the back of your head," Katsa said one day, when she'd entered the practice room and he'd greeted her without looking round to identify her.
"What do you mean?" Po lied.
"You always know what's happening behind you."
Po considered her words with practiced effort. "Katsa, do you never notice the noise you make when you burst into a room?" That much was true. She was perhaps the noisiest person at Randa's court. "No one flings doors open the way you do."
Katsa did not believe him. "Perhaps your Grace gives you a heightened sense of things," she figured.
Po shook his head. He didn't have a heightened sense of things… not exactly. "Perhaps, but no more than your own."
Yes, because he's right and I'm a horse's ass, Katsa thought bitterly. She turned her back to him to stretch.
Po still got the worst of their fights, because of her flexibility and her tireless energy, and mostly because of her speed. She might not have hit him how she wanted, but she still hit him. And, she noticed, he suffered pain more. Po stopped the fight once while she grappled to pin his arm and his legs and his back to the ground and he hit her repeatedly in the ribs with his one free hand to test the theory.
His knuckles grew sore after a couple times, landing hits straight to her bones. Po could sense the throb of it in her body and laughed because his hits would have taken down any Lienid fighter by now, yet she hadn't acknowledged the pain, if she felt it at all. "Doesn't that hurt?" he asked her incredulously. "Don't you feel it? I've hit you possibly twelve times, and you don't even flinch."
Katsa sat up on her heels and felt the spot, below her breast. She shrugged. "It hurts, but it's not bad."
"Your bones are made of rock! You walk away from these fights without a sore spot, while I limp away and spend the day icing my bruises."
Katsa noticed he didn't wear his rings while they fought, either. True to his promise with Giddon, Po took them off, hoping she wouldn't have cared on their first day, but she huffed as she saw him stretching his arms to warm up. When she'd protested that it was an unnecessary precaution, she saw his face had assumed a mask of innocence.
"I promised Giddon, didn't I?" he'd answered, and that fight began with Po ducking and laughing as Katsa swung at his face. It was lucky that Giddon hadn't shown up for their practice until after.
They didn't wear boots, either, not after Katsa accidentally clipped him on the forehead. Po had dropped to his hands and knees, and Katsa saw at once what had happened. Great hills! "Call Raff!" she'd cried to Oll, who watched on the side. She'd helped Po sit on the floor, ripped her own sleeve, and tried to stop the flow of blood that ran into his dazed eyes. Po didn't remember much, but Katsa's memory of it was enough as she'd replayed it in her mind, sorry beyond belief.
Raffin and Bann, true medicine men they were, worked miracles on Po. When they had given Po the go-ahead to fight a few days later, Katsa insisted they fight barefoot. And she had taken much better care of his face since then, holding herself back to keep Po from getting too hurt.
They almost always practiced in front of an audience. A scattering of soldiers, or underlords. Oll, whenever he could, for the fights gave him so much pleasure. Giddon, though Po knew exactly what he thought of the matter, his thoughts running about how Po was cruel and malicious and how he was hurting his lady, would never stay long, marching back into the castle after a couple drills. Even Katsa's maid, Helda, came on occasion, the only woman who did, and sat with wide eyes that grew wider the longer she sat. Despite their great variety of onlookers, King Randa did not observe, always busy with something or other and only bothering to show for his rambunctious dinners.
King Randa and his dinners got old quick, so Po and Katsa ate together most days after practicing. In her dining room, alone, or in Raffin's workrooms with Raffin and Bann, or sometimes at a table Raffin had brought into Grandfather's room. Grandfather was still ill from his kidnapping, but the company cheered and strengthened him, and Po appreciated the sense of family that they could give his grandfather. If Po closed his eyes, it was like he was back home in Lienid with his brothers and their wives.
They still had their moments, however. When they sat together talking, sometimes Katsa and Po became frozen in each others' eyes, those Graceling eyes that few people in the Royal Continent approved of. They muddled Katsa, but she met them when Po looked at her, and she forced herself to breathe steadily and talk and not become overwhelmed by them. It amazed Po how strong she was, how she shined with determination as she met every challenge. They were his eyes, she told herself, they were only his eyes, and she was not a coward, though Po would have disagreed. Most importantly—and what Po thought was most beautiful—she didn't want to behave toward him as the entire court behaved toward her, avoiding her eyes, awkward and cold. She didn't want to do that to a friend.
As the days passed by in the final few weeks of summer, Katsa began to look forward to meeting with and fighting Po. Although Po did not learn of anything concerning his grandfather, or the erratic fuzziness his Grace would sense sometimes, he did learn a great many things from Katsa, Raffin, Bann, Oll, and Helda. She may have been the impulsive and ruthless Lady Killer to those in the Royal Continent, but here at Randa's court she had her loved ones, and here she was content. By summer's end, it was like a candle in her had been lit. She was talking more, and laughing, and joking, and wondering about Po. Her happiness was infectious, and Po could not refuse her questions.
"Where'd you get your name?" she asked him one day as they sat in Po's grandfather's room, talking quietly so as not to wake him.
Po was wounding a cloth wrapped with ice around his shoulder, courtesy of Raffin and Bann. In the beginning, he would have jumped at its icy sting, but it was something he'd acclimated to, having used it almost daily the past month. "Which one?" he replied. He was called different things around Lienid, from a prince to a hero to a thief. Everyone seemed to think differently, and Po had the honor to hear every last name. "I've got lots to choose from."
Seeing him fumbling, Katsa reached across the table to help him tie the cloth. Po ignored the urge to kiss her forehead in thanks. She sat back down. "Po," she offered. "Does everyone call you that?"
"My brothers gave me that name when I was little," Po replied. His mother had thought that story to him so often growing up that by now Po had her memory committed to heart. "It's a kind of tree in Lienid, the po tree. In autumn its leaves turn silver and gold. Inevitable nickname, I guess."
Katsa broke a piece of bread. Interesting. Had that name been given fondly, or had it been an attempt by his brothers to isolate him — to remind him always that he was a Graceling?
Po busied himself with a mouthful of fruit so that he couldn't respond, and then piled his plate high with breads, meats, cheeses, and more fruit, for today Randa's court had apricots just arrived from Lienid. It was a pleasant reminder of home, especially when fighting Katsa was almost as exhausting as getting his Lienid markings, and he needed something to keep his spirits and his strength up. He began to devour the food just about as fast as he'd piled it up.
Katsa watched him curiously. She knew she could eat a lot, but Po was something else altogether. She thought of the food he ate, what his family did, what living in Lienid must have been like. "What's it like to have six older brothers?" she asked.
Po shrugged, taking a bite of the apricot. He thought he must have visited an apricot orchard once on his travels. His older brother, Viron, had some near his city. "I don't think it was for me what it would be for most others," he admitted. Not when I have my Grace, but also... "Hand fighting is revered in Lienid. My brothers are great fighters, and of course I was able to hold my own with them, even though I was small, and eventually surpass them, every one of them. They treated me like an equal, like more than an equal."
I wonder if they were on good terms. "And were they also your friends?"
Po couldn't hide his smile, thinking of Skye, Silvern, and Viron. "Oh, yes. Especially the younger ones."
Katsa leaned against the back of her chair. Mentions of Po's Grace went through her mind, wondering if his Grace had announced itself less drastically than Katsa's had. Perhaps if she had six older brothers, she would also have six friends… Or maybe everything was different in Lienid, this strange island he came from.
"I've heard the Lienid castles are built on mountain peaks so high that people have to be lifted to them by ropes," Katsa recounted.
The Royal Continent had a peculiar way of talking about the Lienid, as if they were a new species of animal rather than people. Po grinned at her. "Only my father's city has the ropes." He helped himself to more water and turned back to the food on his plate.
Katsa flickered with impatience. "Well? Are you going to explain them to me?"
"Katsa," Po chastised the Lady Killer. He forked a couple cubes of cheese. "Is it too much for you to understand that a man might be hungry after you've beaten him half to death? I'm beginning to think it's part of your fighting strategy, keeping me from eating. You want me weak and faint."
"For someone who's Lienid's finest fighter, you have a delicate constitution," she replied with a smirk.
Katsa was opening up to him slowly with every passing day, but this, once again, he did not expect from her. "All right, all right," he laughed as quietly as he could, for Grandfather was sleeping behind them. He put his fork down, wondering where to start with Ror City for someone so unfamiliar with the Lienid in the Royal Continent. "How can I describe this?" He picked his fork up again and used it to draw a picture in the air as he began to explain to her. "My father's city sits at the top of this enormous, tall rock, tall as a mountain, that rises straight up from the plains below. There are three ways up to the city. One is a road built into the sides of the rock, that winds around and around it, slowly. The second is a stairway built into one side of the rock. It bends back and forth on itself until it reaches the top. It's a good approach, if you're strong and wide awake and don't have a horse, though most who choose that route eventually tire and end up begging a ride from someone on the road. My brothers and I race it sometimes," he added. Sometimes, those days seemed so much simpler compared to now.
"Who wins?" Katsa asked.
Po shot her an incredulous look. "Where's your confidence in me, that you need to ask that question? You would beat us all, of course."
"My ability to fight has no bearing on my ability to run up a flight of stairs," she protested.
"Nonetheless, I can't imagine you allowing anyone to beat you at anything." It was her nature, after all.
She snorted. "And the third way?"
"The third way is the ropes."
"But how do they work?"
Po scratched his head, thinking back to his princely lessons back at his father's castle. "Well, it's fairly simple, really. They hang from a great wheel that sits flat, on its side, at the top of the rock. They dangle down over the edge of the rock, and at the bottom they're attached to platforms. Horses turn the wheel, the wheel pulls the ropes, and the platforms rise."
"It seems like a terrible amount of trouble," she summarized.
"Mostly everyone uses the road. The ropes are only for great shipments of things."
"And the whole city sits up in the sky?"
Po broke himself another piece of bread and nodded.
"But why would they build a city in such a place?" she pressed.
He thought back to all the times he'd run through the city, of the way the sun reflected off the gold towers and shined on the bushes and trees in the city streets. "I suppose because it's beautiful," he said with a shrug.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you can see forever from the edges of the city. The fields, the mountains, and hills. To one side, the sea..."
She propped her head up with her arm, suddenly wistful. "The sea," she murmured, and her thoughts faded from his mind.
"You can see two of my brothers' castles from the city," he said. Segarus and Emelin's castles had sparkled like jewels during the sunsets. "In the foothills of the mountains. The other castles are beyond the mountains, or too far to see."
"How many castles are there?"
"Seven," Po recited from his history books, "just as there are seven sons."
"Then one is yours."
"The smallest one."
"Do you mind that yours is the smallest?"
Po reached for an apple from the bowl of fruit on the table, another Lienid export. He bit into it and savored its taste, crisp and juicy as if he'd picked it off an apple orchard back home from Arman's city. "I'm glad mine is the smallest," he replied, "though my brothers don't believe me when I say so."
Katsa did not blame them for disbelieving.
"I don't have the ambitions of my brothers. I've never wanted a large holding. I've never wanted to be a king or an overlord." It was the way of the Lienid princes, but as a Graceling, Po was allowed to stray from that path.
"No, nor have I, " Katsa agreed. "I've thanked the hills countless times that Raffin was born the son of Randa, and I only his niece, and his sister's daughter at that."
"My brothers want all that power," Po continued, the apple suddenly tasting sour in his mouth. His three eldest brothers came to mind. It didn't take long at all for them to go from boys, who liked to grapple and go on adventures with Po, to married men, with a castle, a city, and children of their own. "They love to get wrapped up in the disputes of my father's court. They actually revel in it. They love managing their own castles and their own cities. I do believe sometimes that they all wish to be king." Their thoughts had said as much over the years.
Po felt her eyes on him as he leaned back in his chair with a sigh and ran his fingers along his sore shoulder.
"My castle doesn't have a city," he explained. It was something his brothers made fun of him for, but his holding had all he could ever want. "It's not far from a town, but the town governs itself. It doesn't have a court, either. Really, it's just a great house that'll be my home for the times when I'm not travelling."
Katsa grabbed an apple for herself and considered his words. "You intend to travel?"
"I'm more restless than my brothers," he confessed. "But it's so beautiful, my castle; it's the most wonderful place to go home to." He wished he could think to her how it looked like, as his mother and grandfather could do with him. With its whitewashed stone and window frames and balconies painted blue like the sky and its simplistic design, it seemed like a castle Katsa could take to. He began to list all his favorite quirks of his home. "It sits on a cliff above the sea. There are steps down the water, cut into the cliff. And balconies hanging over the cliff—you feel as if you'll fall if you lean too far. At night the sun goes down across the water, and the whole sky turns red and orange, and the sea to match it. Sometimes there are great fish out there, fish of impossible colors. They come to the surface and roll about—you can watch them from the balconies," Po chuckled softly. "And in the winter the waves are high, and the wind'll knock you down. You can't go out on the balconies in the winter. It's dangerous, and it's wild..." And I like it, just how I like you, Po wanted to say, but from the bed, Grandfather's thoughts began to stir from his slumber. "Grandfather," Po blurted out. He couldn't help himself. He turned round to him.
Katsa looked to Po and his grandfather, yawning as she awoke from her trance of the tiny castle on the sea. With the eyes in the back of his head, she thought wryly, and despite the trust they shared, Po made a mental note not to be so careless with his Grace.
Glimpses of Po's castle passed through Grandfather's mind: the way the water sparkled like glass at noon, the fish Po would fish out for dinner when Grandfather would come to visit, and the warm fire that would greet him at Po's castle in the winter. "You speak of your castle, boy," he said. How I miss it.
"Grandfather, how are you feeling?"
"Better, now that I see you." Do I smell apricots?
"Have you eaten?"
Not since this morning. "I would like one." Seems suitable given the conversation.
Po would have worried that Katsa overheard them, but her mind was far away. She hadn't known there were sights in the world so beautiful that a person like Po would want to spend an age staring at them.
As Po reached for an apricot on the table, he glanced at Katsa. Her breath hitched at the way the torch on the wall caught that attractively warm gleam of his eyes. Po pretended not to notice, though he couldn't hide the flutter of his heart or how he didn't want to tear his eyes away from hers, that emerald and that sapphire, so still now, so calm in the dark. "I have a weakness for beautiful sights," Po murmured. "My brothers tease me."
"Your brothers are the foolish ones," Grandfather said, "for not seeing the strength in beautiful things." Po, I'd like some water as well. I'm quite thirsty. As Po twisted back to the table for the water pitcher, Grandfather addressed Katsa. "Come here, child. Let me see your eyes, for they make me stronger." Grandfather spit them #Facts like they were straight fire (A/N: Sorry, there was no medieval translation for this.). He was not the only one who found strength in her eyes.
The gesture brought a smile to Katsa's face, and Po could not resist sharing it with her. Katsa moved to sit beside Po's grandfather, and as he ate his apricot and sipped his water, he and Po told her more about Po's castle, about Po's brothers, and about Ror's city in the sky.
