by Graceling
Chapter Twenty-three
“KATSA.”
His voice woke her. She opened her eyes and knew it to be about three hours before dawn. “What is it?”
“I can’t sleep.” She sat up. “Too worried?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I assume you didn’t wake me just for my company.”
“You don’t need the sleep; and if I’m going to be awake we may as well be moving.”
And she was up, and her blanket rolled, and her quiver and bow and bags on her back in an instant. A path, sloping downhill, ran through the trees. The forest was black. Po took her arm and led her as best he could, stumbling over stones and resting his hand on trees she couldn’t see to steady their passage.
When a cold, gritty light finally brought shadow and shape to their path, they moved faster, practically ran. Snow began to fall, and the trail, wider and flatter, glowed a pale blue. The inn that would sell them horses was beyond the forest, hours away by foot. As they hurried on, Katsa found herself looking forward to the rest for her feet and her lungs that the horses would bring. She opened the thought to Po.
“It takes this,” he said, “to tire you. Running, in the dark, on no sleep, and no food, after days of climbing in the mountains.” He didn’t smile, and he wasn’t teasing. “I’m glad. Whatever it is we’re running toward, we’re likely to need your energy, and your stamina.”
That reminded her. She reached into a bag on her back. “Eat,” she said. “We must both eat, or we’ll be good for nothing.”
IT WAS MIDMORNING, and the snow still drifted down, when they neared the place where the forest stopped abruptly and the fields began. Po turned to her suddenly, alarm screaming in every feature of his face. He began to run headlong down the path through the trees, toward the edge of the forest. And then Katsa heard it—men’s voices raised, yelling, and the thunder of hooves, coming closer. She ran after Po and broke through the trees several paces behind him. A woman staggered across the fields toward them, a small woman with arms raised, her face a mask of terror. Dark hair and gold hoops in her ears. A black dress, and gold on the fingers she stretched out to Po. And behind her an army of men on galloping horses, led by one man with streaming robes and an eyepatch, and a raised bow, and a notched arrow that flew from the bow and struck the woman square in the back. The woman jerked and stumbled. She fell on her face in the snow.
Po stopped cold. He ran back to Katsa, yelling, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” but she had already swung the bow from her back and reached for an arrow. She pulled the string and took aim. And then the horses stopped. The man with the eyepatch screamed out, and Katsa froze.
“Oh, what an accident!” he cried.
His voice was a choke, a sob. So full of desperate pain that Katsa gasped, and tears rose to her eyes.
“What a terrible, terrible accident!” the man screamed. “My wife! My beloved wife!”
Katsa stared at the crumpled body of the woman, black dress and flung arms, white snow stained red. The man’s sobs carried to her across the fields. It was an accident. A terrible, tragic accident. Katsa lowered her bow.
“No! Shoot him!”
Katsa gaped at Po, shocked at his words, at the wildness in his eyes. “But, it was an accident,” she said.
“You promised to do what I said.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to shoot a grieving man whose wife has had such an accident—”
His voice was angry now, as she’d never heard it. “Give me the bow,” he hissed, so strange and rough, so unlike himself.
“No.”
“Give it to me.”
“No! You’re not yourself!”
He clutched his hair then and looked behind him desperately, at the man who watched them, his one eye cocked toward them, his gaze cool, measuring. Po and the man stared at each other for just a moment. Some flicker of recognition stirred inside Katsa, but then it was gone. Po turned back to her, calm now. Desperately, urgently calm.
“Will you do something else, then?” he said. “Something much smaller, that will hurt no one?”
“Yes, if it will hurt no one.”
“Will you run with me now, back into the forest? And if he starts to speak, will you cover your ears?”
What an odd request, but she felt that same strange flicker of recognition; and she agreed, without knowing why. “Yes.”
“Quickly, Katsa.”
In an instant they turned and ran, and when she heard voices she clapped her hands to her ears. But she could still hear words barked here and there, and what she heard confused her. And then Po’s voice, yelling at her to keep running; yelling at her, she thought vaguely, to drown out the other voices. She half heard a muffled clatter of hooves growing behind them. The clatter turned into a thunder. And then she saw the arrows striking the trees around them.
The arrows made her angry. We could kill these men, all of them, she thought to Po. We should fight. But he kept yelling at her to run, and his hand tightened on her shoulder and pushed her forward, and she had that sense again that all was not right, that none of this was normal, and that in this madness, she should trust Po.
They raced around trees and clambered up slopes, rushing in whatever direction Po chose. The arrows dropped off as they moved deeper into the forest, for the woods slowed the horses and confused the men. Still they kept running. They came to a part of the forest so thickly wooded that the snow had caught in the branches of the trees and never reached the ground. Our footprints, Katsa thought. He’s taken us here so they can’t trace our footprints. She clung to that thought, because it was the only piece of this senselessness she understood.
Finally, Po pulled her hands from her ears. They ran more, until they came to a great, wide tree with brown needles, the ground littered with dead branches that had fallen from its trunk. “There’s a hollow place, up high,” Po said. “There’s an opening in the trunk. Can you climb it? If I go first, can you follow?”
“Of course. Here,” she said, making a cup with her hands. He put one foot into her palms and jumped, and she lifted him up as high as she could into the tree. She made handholds and footholds of the rough places in the trunk and hustled up after him. “Avoid that branch,” he called down to her. “And this one: A breeze would knock it down.” She used the limbs he used; he climbed and she followed. He disappeared, and a moment later his arms reached out of a great hole above her. He pulled her inside the tree, into the hollowed-out space he’d sensed from the ground. They sat in the dark, breathing heavily, their legs entwined in their tree cave.
“We’ll be safe here, for now,” Po said. “As long as they don’t come after us with dogs.”
But why were they hiding? Now that they sat still, the strangeness of all that had happened began to pierce Katsa’s mind, like the arrows the horsemen had shot at their backs. Why were they hiding, why weren’t they fighting? Why were they afraid? That woman had been afraid, too. That woman who looked like a Lienid. Ashen. The wife of Leck was a Lienid, and her name was Ashen—and yes, that made sense, because that grief-stricken man had called her his wife. That man with the eyepatch and the bow in his hands was Leck.
But wasn’t it Leck’s arrow that had struck Ashen? Katsa couldn’t quite recall; and when she tried to watch that moment again in her mind, a fog and falling snow blocked her sight.
Po might remember. But Po had been so strange, too, telling her to shoot Leck as he grieved over his wife. And then telling her to cover her ears. Why cover her ears?
That thing that she couldn’t quite grasp flickered again in her mind. She reached for it and it disappeared. And then she was angry, at her thickheadedness, her stupidity. She couldn’t make sense of all this, because she was too unintelligent.
She looked at Po, who leaned against the wall of the tree and stared straight ahead at nothing. The sight of him upset her even more, for his face seemed thin, his mouth tight. He was tired, worn out, most likely hungry. He’d said something about dogs, and she
knew his eyes well enough to recognize the shadows of worry that sat within them.
Po. Please tell me what’s wrong.
“Katsa.” He sighed her name. He rubbed his forehead and then looked into her face. “Do you remember our conversations about King Leck, Katsa? What we said about him, before we saw him today?”
She stared at him and remembered they’d said something; but she couldn’t remember what it was.
“About his eyes, Katsa. Something he’s hiding.”
“He’s…” It came to her suddenly. “He’s Graced.”
“Yes. Do you remember what his Grace is?”
And then it began to trickle back to her, piece by piece, from some part of her mind she hadn’t been able to reach before. She saw it again clearly. Ashen, terrified, fleeing from her husband and his army; Leck shooting Ashen in the back; Leck crying out in pretended grief, his words fogging Katsa’s mind, transforming the murder her eyes had seen into a tragic accident she couldn’t remember. Po screaming at her to shoot Leck; and she refusing.
She couldn’t look him in the face, for shame overwhelmed her.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“I swore to you I’d do what you said. I swore it, Po.”
“Katsa. No one could’ve kept that promise. If I’d known how powerful Leck was, if I’d had the slightest idea—I never should have brought you here.”
“You didn’t bring me here. We came together.”
“Well, and now we’re both in great danger.” He stiffened. “Wait,” he whispered. He seemed to be listening to something, but Katsa could hear nothing. “They’re searching the forest,” he said after a minute. “That one turned away. I don’t think they have dogs.”
“But why are we hiding from them?”
“Katsa—”
“What do you mean, we’re in great danger? Why aren’t we fighting these butchers, why…” She dropped her face into her hands. “I’m so confused. I’m hopelessly stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. It’s Leck’s Grace that takes away your own thought, and it’s my Grace that sees so much more than a person should. You’re confused because Leck confused you deliberately with his words, and because I haven’t told you yet what I know.”
“Then tell me. Tell me what you know.”
“Well, Ashen is dead—that, I don’t have to tell you. She’s dead because she tried to escape Leck with Bitterblue. Here we see her punishment for protecting her child.” She heard his bitterness and remembered that Ashen was not a stranger to him, that he had seen a member of his family murdered today. “I believe you were right about Bitterblue,” he said. “I’m almost sure, from what Ashen wanted as she ran toward me.”
“What did she want?”
“She wanted me to find Bitterblue, and protect her. I … I don’t know what it is Leck wants with her, exactly. But I think Bitterblue’s in the forest, hiding, like us.”
“We must find her before they do.”
“Yes, but there’s more you need to know, Katsa. We’re in particular danger, you and I. Leck saw us, he recognized us. Leck saw us…”
He broke off, but it didn’t matter. She understood, suddenly, what Leck had seen. He’d seen them run away when they shouldn’t have had the slightest idea of their danger. He’d seen her put her hands over her ears when they shouldn’t have known the power of his words.
“He doesn’t—he doesn’t know how much of the truth I know,” Po said. “But he knows his Grace doesn’t work on me. I’m a threat to him and he wants me dead. And you he wants alive.”
Katsa’s eyes snapped to his face. “But they were shooting at us—”
“I heard the command, Katsa. The arrows were meant for me.”
“We should have fought,” Katsa said. “We could’ve taken those soldiers. We must find him now and kill him.”
“No, Katsa. You know you can’t be in his presence.”
“I can cover my ears somehow.”
“You can’t block out all sound, and he’ll only talk louder. He’ll yell and you’ll hear him—your hearing is too good—and his words are no less dangerous if they’re muffled. Even the words of his soldiers are dangerous. Katsa, you’ll end up confused again and we’ll have to run—”
“I won’t let him do that to me again, Po—”
“Katsa.” There was a tired certainty in his voice, and she didn’t want to hear what he was going to say. “It only took him a few words,” he said, “and he had you. A few words erased everything you’d seen. He wants you, Katsa, he wants your Grace. And I can’t protect you.”
She hated the truth of his words, for he was right. Leck could do what he wanted with her. He could make a monster of her, if that was his wish. “Where is he now?”
“I don’t know; not nearby. But he’s probably in the forest, looking for us or for Bitterblue.”
“Will it be difficult to avoid him?”
“I don’t think so. My Grace will tell me if he’s near, and we can run and hide.”
A sick feeling stopped her breath. What if he tried to turn her against Po?
She took her dagger from her belt and held it out to him. He looked back at her with quiet eyes, understanding. “It won’t come to that,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Take it anyway.”
He set his mouth but didn’t argue. He took the dagger and slid it into his own belt. She pulled the knife from her boot and passed it to him. She handed him the bow and helped him fasten the quiver of arrows onto his back.
“There’s not much we can do about my hands and feet,” she said, “but at least I’m unarmed. You’d stand a chance against me, Po, if you had a blade in each hand and I had none.”
“It won’t come to that.”
No, it probably wouldn’t. But if it did, there was no harm in being prepared. She watched his face, his eyes, which dimly glowed. His tired eyes, his dear eyes. He’d be better able to defend himself if her hands were bound. She wondered, should they bind her hands?
“And now you’ve crossed into the realm of the absurd,” he said.
She grinned. “We should try it, though, in our fights.”
A smile twitched in the corner of his mouth. “I could agree to that, sometime, when all of this is behind us.”
“Now,” she said, “let’s find your cousin.”
Chapter Twenty-four
IT WAS NOT easy for her to walk helplessly through the forest, Po deciding where to go and knowing when and where to hide, freezing in his tracks at the sense of things she couldn’t see or hear. His Grace was invaluable, she knew that. But Katsa had never felt so much like a child.
“She became hopeful when she saw me,” Po said, speaking quickly as they rushed through the trees. “Ashen did. At the sight of me her heart filled with hope, for Bitterblue.”
This hope was what directed their steps now. Ashen had hoped so hard for Po to find Bitterblue that she’d left him with a sense of a place she believed Bitterblue to be, a particular spot both she and the child knew from the rides they took together. It was south of the mountain-pass road, in a hollow with a stream.
“I know a bit of how it looks,” Po said. “But I don’t know exactly where it is, and I don’t know if she would’ve stayed there once she realized the entire army was searching for her.”
“At least we know where to start,” Katsa said. “She can’t have gone too far.”
They raced through the forest. The snow had stopped, and water dripped from pine needles and rushed through the streams. They passed patches of mud trampled with the feet of the soldiers who sought them.
“If she’s left great footprints like these, they’ll have found her by now,” Katsa said.
“Let’s hope she inherited some of her father’s cunning.”
More than once a soldier came uncomfortably near, and Po altered their path in order to skirt around him. One time while avoiding one soldier they nearly ran into another. They scrambled up a tree, and Po readied an ar
row, but the fellow never took his eyes from the ground. “Princess Bitterblue,” the man called. “Come now, Princess. Your father is very worried for you.”
The soldier wandered away, but it was a number of minutes before Katsa was able to climb down. She’d heard the man’s words, even with her hands over her ears. She’d fought against them, but still they’d clouded her mind. She sat in the tree, shuddering, while Po grasped her chin, looked into her eyes, and talked her through her confusion.
“All right,” she said finally. “My mind is clear.”
They clambered down. They moved quickly and left as little trace as possible of their own passage.
NEAR THE ENTRANCE to the forest, things became tricky. The soldiers were everywhere, gathered in groups, moving in every direction. She and Po ran for short bursts when Po decided it was safe, and then hid.
Once, Po grabbed her arm and jerked her backward, and they raced back the way they’d come. They found a great mossy rock and hunched behind it, Po’s hands clapped over her ears, his eyes glowing with a fierce concentration. Wedged between the rock and Po, his heart beating fast against her body, she knew this time they hid from more than mere soldiers. They waited, it seemed interminably. Then Po took her wrist and motioned for her to follow. They crept away by a different route, one that widened the distance between them and the Monsean king.
WHEN THEY were as close to the entrance to the forest as Po deemed safe, they turned south, as they hoped Bitterblue had done. When a stream bubbled across their path Po stopped. He crouched down and clutched his head. Katsa stood beside him and watched and listened, waiting for him to sense something from the forest or from the memory of Ashen’s hope.
“There’s nothing,” he said finally. “I can’t tell if this is the right stream.”
Katsa crouched beside him. “If the soldiers haven’t found her yet,” she said, “then she left no obvious trace, even in all this snow and mud. She must have had the presence of mind to walk through a stream, Po. Every stream in this forest flows from mountain to valley. She would’ve known to go west, away from the valleys. Is there any harm in following this stream west? If we don’t stumble upon her, we can continue south and search the next stream.”
