Graceling

CHAPTER ONE\ IN THESE DUNGEONS the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind. One that had so far proven correct, as Oll’s maps tended to do. Katsa ran her hand along the cold walls and counted doors and passageways as she went. Turning when it was time to turn; stopping finally before an opening that should contain a stairway leading down. She crouched and felt forward with her hands. There was a stone step, damp and slippery with moss, and another one below it. This was Oll’s staircase, then. She only hoped that when he and Giddon followed her with their torches, they would see the moss slime, tread carefully, and not waken the dead by clattering headlong down the steps.\ Katsa slunk down the stairway. One left turn and two right turns. She began to hear voices as she entered a corridor where the darkness flickered orange with the light of a torch set in the wall. Across from the torch was another corridor where, according to Oll, anywhere from two to ten guards should be standing watch before a certain cell at the passageway’s end.\ These guards were Katsa’s mission. It was for them that she had been sent first.\ Katsa crept toward the light and the sound of laughter. She could stop and listen, to get a better sense of how many she would face, but there was no time. She pulled her hood down low and swung around the corner.\ She almost tripped over her first four victims, who were sitting on the floor across from each other, their backs against the wall, legs splayed, the air stinking with whatever strong drink they’d brought down here to pass the time of their watch. Katsa kicked and struck at temples and necks, and the four men lay slumped together on the floor before amazement had even registered in their eyes.\ There was only one more guard, sitting before the cell bars at the end of the corridor. He scrambled to his feet and slid his sword from its sheath. Katsa walked toward him, certain that the torch at her back hid her face, and particularly her eyes, from his sight. She measured his size, the way he moved, the steadiness of the arm that held the sword toward her.\ "Stop there. It’s clear enough what you are." His voice was even. He was brave, this one. He cut the air with his sword, in warning. "You don’t frighten me."\ He lunged toward her. She ducked under his blade and whirled her foot out, clipping his temple. He dropped to the ground.\ She stepped over him and ran to the bars, squinting into the darkness of the cell. A shape huddled against the back wall, a person too tired or too cold to care about the fighting going on. Arms wrapped around legs, and head tucked between knees. He was shivering—she could hear his breath. She shifted, and the light glanced over his crouched form. His hair was white and cut close to his head. She saw the glimmer of gold in his ear. Oll’s maps had served them well, for this man was a Lienid. He was the one they were looking for.\ She pulled on the door latch. Locked. Well, that was no surprise, and it wasn’t her problem. She whistled once, low, like an owl. She stretched the brave guard flat on his back and dropped one of her pills into his mouth. She ran up the corridor, turned the four unfortunates on their backs beside each other, and dropped a pill into each mouth. Just as she was beginning to wonder if Oll and Giddon had lost themselves in the dungeons, they appeared around the corner and slipped past her.\ "A quarter hour, no more," she said.\ "A quarter hour, My Lady." Oll’s voice was a rumble. "Go safely."\ Their torchlight splashed the walls as they approached the cell. The Lienid man moaned and drew his arms in closer. Katsa caught a glimpse of his torn, stained clothing. She heard Giddon’s ring of lock picks clink against itself. She would have liked to have waited to see that they opened the door, but she was needed elsewhere. She tucked her packet of pills into her sleeve and ran.\ THE CELL GUARDS reported to the dungeon guard, and the dungeon guard reported to the underguard. The underguard reported to the castle guard. The night guard, the king’s guard, the wall guard, and the garden guard also reported to the castle guard. As soon as one guard noticed another’s absence, the alarm would be raised, and if Katsa and her men weren’t far enough away, all would be lost. They would be pursued, it would come to bloodshed; they would see her eyes, and she would be recognized. So she had to get them all, every guard. Oll had guessed there would be twenty. Prince Raffin had made her thirty pills, just in case.\ Most of the guards gave her no trouble. If she could sneak up on them, or if they were crowded in small groups, they never knew what hit them. The castle guard was a bit more complicated, because five guards defended his office. She swirled through the lot of them, kicking and kneeing and hitting, and the castle guard jumped up from his guardhouse desk, burst through the door, and ran into the fray.\ "I know a Graceling when I see one." He jabbed with his sword, and she rolled out of the way. "Let me see the colors of your eyes, boy. I’ll cut them out. Don’t think I won’t."\ It gave her some pleasure to knock him on the head with the hilt of her knife. She grabbed his hair, dragged him onto his back, and dropped a pill onto his tongue. They would all say, when they woke to their headaches and their shame, that the culprit had been a Graceling boy, Graced with fighting, acting alone. They would assume she was a boy, because in her plain trousers and hood she looked like one, and because when people were attacked it never occurred to anyone that it might have been a girl. And none of them had caught a glimpse of Oll or Giddon: She had seen to that.\ No one would think of her. Whatever the Graceling Lady Katsa might be, she was not a criminal who lurked around dark courtyards at midnight, disguised. And besides, she was supposed to be en route east. Her uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, had seen her off just that morning, the whole city watching, with Captain Oll and Giddon, Randa’s underlord, escorting her. Only a day of very hard riding in the wrong direction could have brought her south to King Murgon’s court.\ Katsa ran through the courtyard, past flower beds, fountains, and marble statues of Murgon. It was quite a pleasant courtyard, really, for such an unpleasant king; it smelled of grass and rich soil, and the sweetness of dew-dripped flowers. She raced through Murgon’s apple orchard, a trail of drugged guards stretching out behind her. Drugged, not dead: an important distinction. Oll and Giddon, and most of the rest of the secret Council, had wanted her to kill them. But at the meeting to plan this mission, she’d argued that killing them would gain no time.\ "What if they wake?" Giddon had said.\ Prince Raffin had been offended. "You doubt my medicine. They won’t wake."\ "It would be faster to kill them," Giddon had said, his brown eyes insistent. Heads in the dark room had nodded.\ "I can do it in the time allotted," Katsa had said, and when Giddon had started to protest, she’d held up her hand. "Enough. I won’t kill them. If you want them killed, you can send someone else."\ Oll had smiled and clapped the young lord on the back. "Just think, Lord Giddon, it’ll make it more fun for us. The perfect robbery, past all of Murgon’s guards, and nobody hurt? It’s a good game."\ The room had erupted with laughter, but Katsa hadn’t even cracked a smile. She wouldn’t kill, not if she didn’t have to. A killing couldn’t be undone, and she’d killed enough. Mostly for her uncle. King Randa thought her useful. When border ruffians were stirring up trouble, why send an army if you could send a single representative? It was much more economical. But she’d killed for the Council, too, when it couldn’t be avoided. This time it could be avoided.\ At the far end of the orchard she came upon a guard who was old, as old, perhaps, as the Lienid. He stood in a grove of yearling trees, leaning on his sword, his back round and bent. She snuck up behind him and paused. A tremor shook the hands that rested on the hilt of his blade.\ She didn’t think much of a king who didn’t retire his guards in comfort when they’d gotten too old to hold a sword steady.\ But if she left him, he would find the others she’d felled and raise the alarm. She struck him once, hard, on the back of the head, and he slumped and let out a puff of air. She caught him and lowered him to the ground, as gently as she could, and then dropped a pill into his mouth. She took a moment to run her fingers along the lump forming on his skull. She hoped his head was strong.\ She had killed once by accident, a memory she held close to her consciousness. It was how her Grace had announced its nature, a decade ago. She’d been a child, barely eight years old. A man who was some sort of distant cousin had visited the court. She hadn’t liked him—his heavy perfume, the way he leered at the girls who served him, the way his leer followed them around the room, the way he touched them when he thought no one was watching. When he’d started to pay Katsa some attention, she had grown wary. "Such a pretty little one," he’d said. "Graceling eyes can be so very unattractive. But you, lucky girl, look better for it. What is your Grace, my sweetness? Storytelling? Mind reading? I know. You’re a dancer."\ Katsa hadn’t known what her Grace was. Some Graces took longer than others to surface. But even if she had known, she wouldn’t have cared to discuss it with this cousin. She’d scowled at the man and turned away. But then his hand had slid toward her leg, and her hand had flown out and smashed him in the face. So hard and so fast that she’d pushed the bones of his nose into his brain.\ Ladies in the court had screamed; one had fainted. When they’d lifted him from the pool of blood on the floor and he’d turned out to be dead, the court had grown silent, backed away. Frightened eyes—not just those of the ladies now, but those of the soldiers, the sworded underlords—all directed at her. It was fine to eat the meals of the king’s chef, who was Graced with cooking, or send their horses to the king’s Graced horse doctor. But a girl Graced with killing? This one was not safe.\ Copyright © 2008 by Kristin Cashore\ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.\ Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

\ Katie RoipheIn the course of her dark and eventful tale, Cashore plays with the idea of awkwardness, how at a certain age gifts and talents are burdens, how they make it impossible to feel comfortable in the world. And in this she writes a fairly realistic portrait of teenage life into the baroque courts of her outlandish kingdoms…In many respects Graceling is a study of mysterious angers: it offers a perfect parable of adolescence, as its characters struggle with turbulent emotions they must learn to control. The consequences are more tangible than they usually are in more mundane settings—if Katsa loses control, she breaks someone's jaw by accident—but the principle is the same. The teenage characters in this novel, like some we may know in life, grow into their graces. They realize that their monstrous individuality is not so monstrous after all.\ —The New York Times\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIn a land of seven kingdoms, people with special talents, called Gracelings, are identified by their eyes-Katsa's are green and blue, one of each-although she's eight before her specific Grace is identified as a talent for killing. (While in the court of her uncle, King Randa, she swiped at a man attempting to grope her and struck him dead.) By 18 she's King Randa's henchwoman, dispatched to knock heads and lop off appendages when subjects disobey, but she hates the job. As an antidote, she leads a secret council whose members work against corrupt power, and in this role, while rescuing a kidnapped royal, she meets the silver-and-gold-eyed Po, the Graced seventh son of the Lienid king. That these two are destined to be lovers is obvious, though beautiful, defiant Katsa convincingly claims no man will control her. Their exquisitely drawn romance (the sex is offstage) will slake the thirst of Twilight fans, but one measure of this novel's achievements lies in its broad appeal. Tamora Pierce fans will embrace the take-charge heroine; there's also enough political intrigue to recommend it to readers of Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia trilogy. And while adult readers, too, will enjoy the author's originality, the writing is perfectly pitched at teens struggling to put their own talents to good use. With this riveting debut, Cashore has set the bar exceedingly high. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)\ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \ \ VOYALady Katsa of Middluns and Prince Po of Lienid are both Gracelings, born with a special gift. Since age eight, Katsa has unwillingly served her uncle, King Randa, as his enforcer, because of her terrible ability to maim or kill barehanded. Accidentally meeting when Katsa undertakes a mission for the secret Council, Po and Katsa realize that there is something desperately wrong in the Seven Kingdoms, an evil somehow centered in the universally admired King Leck of Monsea. When Leck turns his attentions to his own daughter, Bitterblue, Katsa and Po recognize the truth: Leck too is Graced, with the ability to deceive, and his benevolence masks a horror that threatens not only the child but also the Kingdoms. Po and Katsa are complex, appealing characters. Growing into her gift, Katsa realizes her true Grace is not killing but survival. Po's intense awareness of those around him threatens Katsa's fierce need for independence, especially as they become lovers. When Katsa must leave a gravely injured Po behind to spirit Bitterblue to safety, she finds that to save them will require both independence and commitment. Cashore juggles her complicated plot with dexterity rivaling Katsa's. There are some undeveloped spots: The Council, an underground resistance group, never assumes its implied importance, and the ending is prolonged. But Cashore writes with an assurance that captures the reader. Female readers will appreciate Po's willingness to take Katsa on her own terms. Intrigue, death, love, a little sex, and pitched battles create a sure winner for mature fantasy fans. Reviewer: Kathleen Beck\ \ \ \ \ KLIATTThis stunning debut novel introduces a world in which certain individuals are born with supernatural abilities, or Graces. Some are benign, but Katsa's is for killing, making her feared by the populace while the king uses her to enforce his will. She revolts by organizing a secret society whose members right wrongs throughout the seven Kingdoms. When Katsa rescues an elderly prince from an inexplicable kidnapping, she and her Council, along with a brave little princess and a handsome prince with the Grace of mind-reading, will take on a seemingly kind and charming king—one with the most dangerous Grace of all. Readers will cheer for this plucky heroine and her loyal friends. For all collections. Reviewer: Deirdre Root\ \ \ \ \ Children's LiteratureKatsa is a killer. The eighteen-year-old heroine of Kristin Cashore's Seven Kingdoms fights better than Bruce Lee on speed and always gets her man. That is the problem. Kat is weary of doing the dirty work of her uncle, King Randas. She is beginning to question her special grace, specifically the heightened power of fighting that came with her separate-colored eyes. Meeting Prince Po, a near-equal in the lethal arts, creates other questions for the young lady. As she and Po set off on a quest to discover why Po's kindly grandfather was kidnapped, the plot thickens into romance. Cashore's first novel contains all the requirements of fantasy: a world stuck in the medieval mode of swords and long-suffering peasants, a touch of magic, and non-stop action. But once she's gotten her moral priorities sorted out, Katsas real problem is not surviving impossible odds. For her, that's a bagatelle. Much harder is admitting her femininity and recognizing that love can have a place in her life. Still, it is fun watching Cashore's wonder woman single-handedly slay mountain lions and conquer impassable winter mountain passes in the course of rescuing the young queen of a rogue kingdom. It's fun watching her get her man, too. Reviewer: Kathleen Karr\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalGr 9 Up—Certain people in Katsa's world are born with a particular Grace—a superhuman skill—and are identified by having two different colored eyes in Kristin Cashore's debut novel (Harcourt, 2008). Katsa has a Grace for killing. She has been used by her uncle, King Randa, as an enforcer to punish his enemies, and she finally rebels against his wishes. She escapes with Prince Po, a Graceling from an adjoining kingdom, and they use their talents to protect the princess of another realm from her father—a Graceling with the most dangerous power they have ever encountered. This excellently performed full-cast production features Chelsea Mixon as Lady Katsa, who starts out with little emotion, but becomes more animated as Katsa breaks away from her uncle's control and becomes her own person. Others in the cast, especially Zachary Exton as Prince Po and Tim Green as King Leck, are wonderful at bringing the characters to life. This fantasy/romance is a first purchase for libraries with YA audiobook collections.—Suanne Roush, Osceola High School, Seminole, FL\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsAn assured fantasy debut grapples with questions of identity, authenticity and autonomy. Lady Katsa is a Graceling, with an inborn magical gift marking her as both feared outcast and exploitable resource. While her peculiar Grace-the unsurpassed ability to kill-has been honed over the years by her uncle the king to bully and punish, Katsa has also secretly used it to bring a measure of justice to the Seven Kingdoms. When she encounters a strange prince whose mysterious Grace may just be a match for her own, she learns the corrosive seduction of power corrupted, but also the courage to trust others-and herself. Katsa is an ideal adolescent heroine, simultaneously confident of her strengths yet unsure of her place in the world. Every character is crafted with the same meticulous devotion to human comprehensibility, making the villain all the more appalling in his understated, twisted madness. In a tale filled with graphic violence and subtle heartbreak, gentle passion and savage kindness, matter-of-fact heroics and bleak beauty, no defeat is ever total and no triumph comes without cost. Grace-full, in every sense. (Fantasy. YA)First printing of 75,000\ \ \ \ \ Booklist“An impressive first novel, this well crafted and rewarding fantasy will leave readers hoping for more.” Booklist\ \ \ \ \ The Horn Book Magazine"With a butt-kicking but emotionally vulnerable heroine, [Graceling] should appeal to fans of recent girl-power urban fantasies. . . ."\ \ \ \ \ BookPage"Cashore strikes a strong balance between adventure, drama and romance—bloody battles and sexual tension co-exist in equal measure—and Katsa's combination of pride in her unique talents and vulnerability in her self-doubts make her a strongly sympathetic character. Readers will identify closely with this young woman, whose coming of age also involves coming to terms with a talent that is both a blessing and a curse."—BookPage, November 2008\ \ \ \ \ Catherine Gilbert Murdock“A brilliant, unforgettable story. I consumed Graceling in one sitting, awed by its originality, breadth, and humanity. For a first novel - for any novel - this book is extraordinary.”\ —Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of Dairy Queen\ \ \ \ \ \ Susan Hirschman“I can’t remember when I last was this impressed by a new fantasy. Kristin Cashore’s voice is fresh and fluent. The characters are memorable, the plot filled with surprises—all of which are entirely plausible—and the end result is a story that you tear through so that you can immediately start again at the beginning and read it with the care it deserves. A truly spectacular novel.”\ —Susan Hirschman, Founder of Greenwillow Books\ \ \