by Graceling
“This seems a bit hopeless,” Po said, but he stood, turned with her, and followed the water west. When Katsa found a tangle of long, dark hair snagged on a branch that snapped against her stomach, she called Po’s name in his mind. She held the tangle of hair up for him to see. She tucked it into her sleeve and enjoyed the slightly more hopeful expression on his face.
When the stream curved sharply and entered a little hollow of grasses and ferns, Po stopped and held up his hand. “I recognize this place. This is it.”
“Is she here?”
He stood for a moment. “No. But let’s continue up the stream. Quickly. I fear there may be soldiers on our tail.”
Only minutes later he turned to her, relief in the lines of his tired face. “I feel her now.” He stepped out of the stream and Katsa followed. He wove his way through the trees until he came to a fallen tree trunk stretched across the forest floor. He measured the trunk with his eyes. He walked to one end, crouched down, and looked inside.
“Bitterblue,” he said into the trunk. “I’m your cousin Po, the son of Ror. We’ve come to protect you.”
There was no response. Po spoke quietly, and gently. “We’re not going to hurt you, cousin. We’re here to help you. Are you hungry? We have food.”
Still there was no response from the fallen tree. Po stood and turned to Katsa. He spoke in a low voice. “She’s afraid of me. You must try.”
Katsa snorted. “You think she’ll be less afraid of me?”
“She’s afraid of me because I’m a man. Take care. She has a knife, and she’s willing to use it.”
“Good for her.” Katsa knelt before the hollow end of the trunk and looked inside. She could just make out the girl, huddled tight, her breath short, panicked. Her hands clutching a knife.
“Princess Bitterblue,” she said. “I’m the Lady Katsa, from the Middluns. I’ve come with Po to help you. You must trust us, Bitterblue. We’re both Graced fighters. We can keep you safe.”
“Tell her we know about Leck’s Grace,” Po whispered.
“We know your father is after you,” Katsa said into the darkness. “We know he’s Graced. We can keep you safe, Bitterblue.”
Katsa waited for some sign from the girl, but there was nothing. She looked up at Po and shrugged her shoulders. “Do you think we could break the tree apart?” she asked. But then from inside the trunk came a small, shaky voice.
“Where is my mother?”
Katsa’s eyes snapped up to Po’s. They searched each other’s faces, uncertain; and then Po sighed, and nodded. Katsa turned back to the trunk. “Your mother is dead, Bitterblue.”
She waited for sobbing, screams. But instead there was a pause, and then the voice came again. Even smaller now.
“The king killed her?”
“Yes,” Katsa said.
There was another silence inside the tree. Katsa waited. “Soldiers are coming,” Po muttered above her. “They’re minutes away.”
She didn’t want to fight these soldiers who carried Leck’s poison in their mouths; and they might not have to, if they could only get this child to come out.
“I can see that knife, Princess Bitterblue,” she said. “Do you know how to use it? Even a small girl can do a lot of damage with a knife. I could teach you.”
Po crouched down and touched her shoulder. “Thank you, Katsa,” he breathed, and then he was up again, stalking a few paces into the trees, looking around and listening for anything his Grace could tell him. And she understood why he thanked her, for the child was crawling her way out of the trunk. Her face appeared from the dimness, then her hands and shoulders. Her eyes gray and her hair dark, like her mother’s. Her eyes big, her face wet with tears, and her teeth chattering. Her fingers gripped tightly around a knife that was longer than her forearm.
She spilled out of the tree trunk and Katsa caught her and felt her cheeks and forehead. The child was shaking with cold. Her skirts were wet and clung to her legs; her boots were soaked through. She wore no coat or muffler, no gloves.
“Great hills, you’re frozen stiff,” Katsa said. She yanked off her own coat and pulled it down over the child’s head. She tried to pull Bitterblue’s arms through the sleeves, but the girl wouldn’t loosen her grip on the knife. “Let it go for a minute, child. Just a second. Hurry, there are soldiers coming.” She pried the knife from the girl’s fingers and fastened the coat into place. She handed the knife back. “Can you walk, Bitterblue?” The girl didn’t answer, but swayed, her eyes unfocused.
“We can carry her,” Po said, suddenly at Katsa’s side. “We must go.”
“Wait,” Katsa said. “She’s too cold.”
“Now. This instant, Katsa.”
“Give me your coat.”
Po tore off his bags, his quiver and bow. He tore off his coat and threw it to Katsa. She tugged the coat over Bitterblue’s head, wrestled with the fingers around the knife again. She pulled the hood over the girl’s ears and fastened it tight. Bitterblue looked like a potato sack, a small, shivering potato sack with empty eyes and a knife. Po tipped the girl over his shoulder and they gathered their things. “All right,” Katsa said. “Let’s go.”
They ran south, stepping on pine needles and rock whenever they could, leaving as little sign of their passage as possible. But the ground was too wet, and the soldiers were quick on their mounts. Their trail was too easy to follow, and before long Katsa heard branches breaking and the thud of horses’ hooves.
Po? How many of them?
“Fifteen,” he said, “at least.”
She breathed through her panic. What if their words confuse me?
His voice was low. “I wish I could fight them alone, Katsa, and out of your hearing. But it would mean us separating, and right now there are soldiers on every side of us. I won’t risk your being found when I’m not there.”
Katsa snorted. Nor will I allow you to fight fifteen men alone.
“We must kill as many of them as possible,” Po said, “before they’re close enough for conversation. And hope that once they’re under attack they’re not very talkative. Let’s find a place to hide the girl. If they don’t see her they’re less likely to speak of her.”
They tucked the child behind rocks and weeds, inside a niche at the base of a tree. “Don’t make a sound, Princess,” Katsa said. “And lend me your knife. I’ll kill one of your father’s men with it.” She took the knife from the girl’s uncomprehending fingers.
Po, Katsa thought, her mind racing. Give me the knives and the daggers. I’ll kill on first sight.
Po pulled two daggers from his belt and a knife from each boot and tossed them to her, one by one. She collected the blades together; he readied the bow and cocked an arrow. They crouched behind a rock and waited, but there wasn’t long to wait. The men came through the trees, moving quickly on their horses, their eyes skimming the ground for tracks. Katsa counted seventeen men. I’ll go right, she thought grimly to Po. You go left. And with that she stood and hurled a knife, and another and another; Po’s arrow flew, and he reached for another. Katsa’s knives and daggers were embedded in the chests of five men, and Po had killed two, before the soldiers even comprehended the ambush.
The bodies of the dead slumped from their horses to the ground, and the bodies of the living jumped after them, pulling swords from sheaths, yelling, screaming unintelligibly, a mindful one or two drawing arrows. Katsa ran toward the men; Po continued shooting. The first came at her with wild eyes and a screeching mouth, swinging his sword so erratically that it was no trouble for Katsa to dodge the blade, kick another rushing man in the head, pull the first man’s dagger from his belt, and stab them both in the neck. She kept the dagger, grabbed a sword, and came out swinging. She knocked another man’s sword from his hands and ran hers through his stomach. She whirled on two men who came from behind and killed them both with her dagger while she fought off a third with her sword. She hurled the dagger into the chest of a soldier on a horse who aimed an arrow at Po.<
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And suddenly only one man was left, his breath ragged and his eyes wide with fear. That man backed away and began to run. In a flash Katsa pulled a knife from another man’s chest and ran after him; but then she heard the smooth release of an arrow, and the man cried out and fell, and lay still.
Katsa looked down at her bloodstained tunic and trousers. She wiped her face, and blood came off onto her sleeve. All around her lay murdered men, men who hadn’t known any better, whose minds were no weaker than her own. Katsa was sick and discouraged, and furious with the king who’d made this bloodbath necessary.
“Let’s make sure they’re dead,” she said, “and get them on the horses. We must send them back, to put Leck off our trail.”
They were dead, every one of them. Katsa pulled arrows and blades from chests and backs and tried not to look at their faces. She cleaned the knives and daggers and handed them back to Po. She carried Bitterblue’s knife back to her and found the girl standing, arms crossed against the cold, eyes alert now, lucid. Katsa glanced down at her bloody clothing. She found herself hoping the child hadn’t witnessed the massacre of men.
“I feel warmer,” Bitterblue said.
“Good. How much of that fight did you see?”
“They didn’t have much of a chance, did they?” It was her only answer. “Where are we going now?”
“I’m not sure. We need to find a safe place to hide, where we can eat and sleep. We need to talk about what happens next.”
“You’ll have to kill the king,” she said, “if you ever want him to stop chasing us.”
Katsa looked at this child, who barely came up to her chest. Po’s sleeves hanging almost to the girl’s knees; her eyes and her nose big under her hood, too big for her little face. Her voice a squeak. But a calmness in her manner of speaking, a certainty as she recommended her father’s murder.
Chapter Twenty-five
THEY KEPT two horses for themselves. Bitterblue rode with Katsa. They wound their way back to the stream to clean themselves of the blood of the soldiers. Then they turned west. They walked the horses through the stream, moving toward the mountains, until the land around them grew rocky enough to hide hoofprints. There, they struck out south along the base of the mountains and began their search for a suitable place to hide for the night. A place they could defend; a place far enough from Leck for safety, but not so far that they couldn’t reach Leck, to kill him.
For of course, Bitterblue was right. Leck had to die. Katsa knew it, but she didn’t like to think of it. For she was a killer, and the murder should be hers; but it was plain that Po would have to be the one to do it. Po kill a king guarded by an army of soldiers. By himself, and without her help.
You mustn’t go near his castle, she thought to Po as they rode. You’d never be able to get close enough to him. You’re far too conspicuous. They would ambush you.
The horses picked their way through the rocks. Po didn’t acknowledge her thoughts, didn’t even look at her, but she knew he’d heard.
You’d do best to sneak up on him in the forest while he’s searching for the child, and shoot him. From as far away as possible.
Po rode before them, his back straight. His arms steady, despite his tiredness and the cold and his lack of a coat.
And then run away as fast as you can.
He slowed then and came beside them. He looked into her face, and something strong in his silver and gold eyes comforted and reassured her. Po was neither weak nor defenseless. He had his Grace and his strength. He reached for her hand. When she gave it to him, he kissed it. He rode ahead, and they continued on.
Bitterblue sat quietly before her. She had stiffened when Po came near; but if she thought their silent exchange odd, she said nothing.
THEY CAME to a place where the land dropped away to the left and formed a deep gully with a lake that shone far below them. To the right the path rose to a cliff that overhung the lake.
“If we cross over to the far side of that cliff and hide there,” Katsa said, “anyone coming after us will either have to cross the cliff as we did or climb up from the gully. They’ll be easily seen.”
“I had the same thought,” Po said. “Let’s see what’s there.”
And so they climbed. The cliff path sloped rather unnervingly toward the drop, but it was a wide path, and the horses clung to its top edge. Pebbles slid from under their hooves and rolled down the slope, clattering over the edge and plummeting down into the lake, but the travelers were safe.
On the far side they found little more than rock and scrub and a few scraggly trees growing from crevices. A shallow, hard cave with its back to the gully and the cliff path seemed the best choice for their camp. “It won’t make for a soft bed,” Po said, “but it’ll hide our fire. Are you hungry, cousin?”
The girl sat on a rock, quietly, her hands gripping her knife. She hadn’t complained of hunger, or of anything else, for that matter. But now she watched with big eyes as Po unwrapped what little food they had, some meat from the night before, and one small apple carried all the way from the inn at the Sunderan foot of the mountains. Bitterblue’s eyes watched the food, and she barely seemed to be breathing. She was ravenous, anyone could see that.
“When did you last eat?” Po asked, as he set the food before her.
“Some berries, this morning.”
“And before that?”
“Yesterday. Yesterday morning.”
“Slowly,” Po said, as Bitterblue took the meat in her hands and tore a great piece off with her teeth. “Slowly, or you’ll be sick.”
“I’ll climb down to the gully and find us some meat,” Katsa said. “The sun will set soon. I’ll take a knife, Po, if you’ll keep a lookout for me.”
Po slid a knife from his boot and tossed it to her. “If you hear the sound of an owl hooting, run. Two hoots, run south. Three hoots, run back up here to the camp.” She nodded. “Agreed.”
“Try the rushes to the south of the lake,” he said. “And pick up a few pebbles on your way down. I think I may have seen some quail.”
Katsa snorted but said nothing. She glanced at the girl, who saw only the food in her hands. Then she turned, worked her way around boulders, and began to forge a path down into the gully.
WHEN KATSA returned to camp with a stringful of quail, plucked and gutted, the sun was sinking behind the mountains. Po was piling branches near the back of the cave. Bitterblue lay nearby, wrapped in a blanket.
“I gather she hasn’t slept much in the last few days,” Po said.
“She’ll be all right now that her clothes are dry. We’ll keep her warm and fed.”
“She’s a calm little thing, isn’t she? Small for ten years old. She helped me gather wood, until she was practically collapsing from exhaustion. I told her to sleep until we had more food. She’s got her fingers wrapped around that knife. And she’s still scared of me—I get the feeling she’s not used to men showing her kindness.”
“Po, I’m beginning to think I don’t want to know what this is all about. I can make no sense of it. I can’t factor your grandfather into it at all.”
Po shook his head and looked at the girl, who was huddled on the ground in her blankets and coats. “I’m not sure how much any of this has to do with sanity or sense. But we’ll keep her safe, and we’ll kill Leck. And eventually we’ll learn whatever truth there is to know of it.”
“She’ll make for an awfully young queen.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too. But there’s no helping it.”
They sat quietly and waited for the darkness that would mask the smoke of their fire. Po pulled another shirt over the one he already wore. She watched his face, his familiar features, his eyes, which caught the pink light of the day’s end. She bit her lip against her worry, for she knew it would not be helpful to him.
“How will you do it?” she asked.
“As you said, most likely. We’ll talk about it when Bitterblue wakes. I expect she’ll be able to help.”
Help to plot the murder of her father. Yes, she probably would help, if she could. For such was the madness that rode the air of this kingdom as they sat in their rocky camp at the edge of the Monsean mountains.
THE LIGHT of the fire, or its crackle, or the smell of the meat sizzling above it woke Bitterblue. She came to sit with them by the flames, her blanket around her shoulders and her knife in hand.
“I’ll teach you how to use that knife,” Katsa told her, “when you’re feeling better. How to defend yourself, how to maim a man. We can use Po as a model.”
The child’s eyes flicked to Katsa’s shyly, and then she looked into her lap.
“Wonderful,” Po said. “It’s quite boring really, the way you beat me to death with your hands and feet, Katsa. It’ll be refreshing to have you coming at me with a knife.”
Bitterblue glanced at Katsa again. “Are you the better fighter?”
“Yes,” Katsa said.
“Far better,” Po said. “There’s no comparison.”
“But Po has other advantages,” Katsa said. “He’s stronger. He sees better in the dark.”
“But in a fight,” Po said, “always bet on the lady, Bitterblue. Even in the dark.”
They sat quietly, waiting for the quail to roast. Bitterblue shivered and pulled her blanket more tightly around her shoulders.
“I would like to have a Grace,” she said, “that allowed me to protect myself.”
Katsa held her breath and forced herself to wait patiently and not ask questions.
After a moment, Bitterblue said, “The king wants me.”
“What for?” Katsa asked, because she could not prevent herself.
Bitterblue didn’t answer this. She bent her chin to her chest and brought her arms in close to her sides, making herself very small. “He has a Grace,” she said. “My mother told me so. She told me he can manipulate people’s minds with his words, so that they believe whatever he says. Even if they hear it from someone else’s mouth; even if it’s a rumor he started that’s spread far beyond him. His power weakens as it spreads, but it does not disappear.” She stared unhappily at the knife in her hands. “She told me he’s the wrong kind of man to have been born with a Grace like this. He makes toys of small and weak people. He likes to cause pain.”
