The next few lessons progressed slowly. Bitterblue was persistent and ferociously determined; but her muscles were untrained, unused to the motions Katsa now expected of her. Katsa was hard-pressed sometimes to know what to teach her. There was some use in teaching the child to block or deliver blows in the traditional sense—some, but not much. She would never last long in a battle if she tried to fight by the usual rules. “What you must do,” Katsa told her, “is inflict as much pain as possible and watch for an opening.”

“And ignore your own pain,” Jem said, “as best you can.” Jem helped with the lessons, as did Bear, and any other of the sailors who could find the time. Some days the lessons served as mealtime distractions for the men in the galley, or on fine days as diversions in the corner of the deck. The sailors didn’t all understand why a young girl should be learning to fight. But none of them laughed at her efforts, even when the methods Katsa encouraged her to use were as undignified as biting, scratching, and hair pulling.

“You don’t need to be strong to drive your thumbs into a man’s eyeballs,” Katsa said, “but it does a lot of damage.”

“That’s disgusting,” Bitterblue said.

“Someone your size doesn’t have the luxury of fighting cleanly, Bitterblue.”

“I’m not saying I won’t do it. I’m only saying it’s disgusting.”

Katsa tried to hide her smile. “Yes, well. I suppose it is disgusting.”

She showed Bitterblue all of the soft places to stab a man if she wanted to kill him—throat, neck, stomach, eyes—the easy places that required less force. She taught Bitterblue to hide a small knife in her boot and how to whip it out quickly. How to drive a knife with both hands and how to hold one in either hand. How to keep from dropping a knife in the bedlam of an attack, when everything was happening so fast your mind couldn’t keep up.

“That’s the way to do it,” Red called out one day when Bitterblue had elbowed Bear successfully in the groin and bent him over double, groaning.

“And now that he’s distracted,” Katsa said, “what will you do?”

“Stab him in the neck with my knife,” Bitterblue said.

“Good girl.”

“She’s a plucky little thing,” Red said, approvingly.

She was a plucky little thing. So little, so completely little, that Katsa knew, as every one of these sailors must know, how much luck she would need if she were to defend herself from an attacker. But what she was learning would give her a fighting chance. The confidence she was gaining would also help. These men, these sailors who stood on the side shouting their encouragement—they helped, too, more than they could know.

“Of course, she’ll never need these skills,” Red added. “A princess of Monsea will always have bodyguards.”

Katsa didn’t say the first words that came to her mind. “It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them,” she said.