Graceling

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The inn sat in what passed for a clearing here in the south of Sunder, but would have been called a forest anywhere else. There was space between oaks and maples for the inn, a stable, a barn, and a patch of garden; and enough open sky to allow sunlight to flicker down and reflect the surrounding trees in the windows of the buildings.

The inn wasn't busy, though neither was it empty. Traffic through Sunder was always steady, even at winter's outset, even at the edge of the mountains. Cart horses labored northward pulling barrels of Monsean cider, or the wood of Sunder's fine forests, or the ice of Sunder's eastern mountains. Merchants bore Lienid tomatoes, grapes, apricots; Lienid jewelry and ornaments; and fish found only in Lienid's seas, north from the Sunderan port cities, up into the Middluns, to Wester, Nander, and Estill. And southward from those same kingdoms came freshwater fish, grains and hay, corn, potatoes, carrots – all the things a people who live in the forests want – and herbs and apples and pears, and horses, to be loaded onto ships and transported to Lienid and Monsea.

A merchant stood now in the yard of the inn, beside a cart stacked high with barrels. He stamped his feet and blew into his hands. The barrels were unmarked and the merchant nondescript, his coat and boots plain, none of his six horses bearing a brand or ornamentation indicating from which kingdom they came. The innkeeper burst into the yard with his sons, gesturing to them and to the horses. He yelled something to the merchant and his breath froze in the air. The merchant called back, but not loudly enough to carry to the thick stand of trees outside the clearing, where Katsa and Bitterblue crouched, watching.

"He's likely to be Monsean," Bitterblue whispered, "come up from the ports and making his way through Sunder. His cart is very full. If he'd come from one of the other kingdoms, wouldn't he have sold more of whatever he's carrying by now? Excepting Lienid, of course – but he doesn't have the look of a Lienid, does he?"

Katsa rifled through her maps. "It hardly matters. Even if we determine he's from Nander or Wester, we don't know who else is at the inn, or who else is likely to arrive. We can't risk it, not until we know whether one of your father's stories has spread into Sunder. We were weeks in the mountains, child. We've no idea what these people have heard."

"The story may not have reached this far. We're some distance from the ports and the mountain pass, and this place is isolated."

"True," Katsa said, "but we don't want to provide them with a story, either, to spread up to the mountain pass or down to the ports. The less Leck knows about where we've been, the better."

"But in that case, no inn will be safe. We'll have to get ourselves from here to Lienid without anyone seeing us." Katsa examined her maps and didn't answer.

"Unless you're planning to kill everyone we see," Bitterblue grumbled. "Oh, Katsa, look – that girl is carrying eggs. Oh, I would kill for an egg."

Katsa glanced up to see the girl, bareheaded and shivering, scuttling from barn to inn with a basket of eggs hung over one arm. The innkeeper gestured to her and called out. The girl set the basket at the base of an enormous tree and hurried over to him. He and the merchant handed her bag after bag, and she slung them over her back and shoulders, until Katsa could barely see her anymore for the bags that covered her. She staggered into the inn. She came out again, and they loaded her down again.

Katsa counted the scattered trees that stood between their hiding place and the basket of eggs. She glanced at the frozen remains of the vegetable garden. Then she shuffled through the maps again and grabbed hold of the list of Council contacts in Sunder. She flattened the page onto her lap.

"I know where we are," Katsa said. "There's a town not far from here, perhaps two days' walk. According to Raffin, a storekeeper there is friendly to the Council. I think we might go there safely."

"Just because he's friendly to the Council doesn't mean he'll be able to see through whatever story Leck's spreading."

"True," Katsa said. "But we need clothing and information. And you need a hot bath. If we could get to Lienid without encountering anyone, we would; but it's impossible. If we must trust someone, I'd prefer it to be a Council sympathizer."

Bitterblue scowled. "You need a hot bath as much as I do."

Katsa grinned. "I need a bath as much as you do. Mine doesn't have to be hot. I'm not going to stick you into some half-frozen pond, to sicken and die, after all you've survived. Now, child," Katsa said, as the merchant and the innkeeper shouldered bags of their own and headed for the inn's entrance, "don't move until I get back."

"Where..." Bitterblue began, but Katsa was already flying from tree to tree, hiding behind one massive trunk and then another, peeking out to watch the windows and doors of the inn. When moments later Katsa and Bitterblue resumed their trek through the Sunderan forest, Katsa had four eggs inside her sleeve and a frozen pumpkin on her shoulder. Their dinner that night had the air of a celebration.

There wasn't much Katsa could do about her appearance or Bitterblue's when it came time to knock on the storekeeper's door, other than clean the dirt and grime as best she could from their faces, manhandle Bitterblue's tangle of hair into some semblance of a braid, and wait until darkness fell. It was too cold to expect Bitterblue to remove her patchwork of furs, and Katsa's wolf hides, no matter how alarming, were less appalling than the stained, tattered coat they hid.

The storekeeper was easily identified, his building the largest and busiest in the town save the inn. He was a man of average height and average build, had a sturdy, no-nonsense wife and an inordinate number of children who seemed to run the gamut from infancy to Katsa's age and older. Or so Katsa gathered, as she and Bitterblue passed their time among the trees at the edge of the town waiting for night to fall. His store was sizable, and the brown house that rose above and behind it enormous. As it would have to be, Katsa thought, to contain so many children. Katsa wished, as the day progressed and more and more children issued from the building to feed the chickens, to help the merchants unload their goods, to play and fight, and squabble in the yard, that this Council contact had not taken his duty to procreate quite so seriously. They would have to wait not only until the town quieted, but until most of these children slept, if Katsa wished their appearance on the doorstep to cause less than an uproar.

When most of the houses were dark, and when light shone from only one of the windows in the storekeeper's home, Katsa and Bitterblue crept from the trees. They passed through the yard and snuck to the back door. Katsa wrapped her fist in her sleeve and thumped on the solid Sunderan wood as quietly as she could and still hope to be heard. After a moment the light in the window shifted. After another moment the door was pushed open a crack, and the storekeeper peered out at them, a candle in his hand. He looked them up and down, two slight, furry figures on his doorstep, and kept a firm grip on the door handle.

"If it's food you want, or beds," he said gruffly, "you'll find the inn at the head of the road."

Katsa's first question was the most risky, and she steeled herself against the answer. "It's information we seek. Have you heard any news of Monsea?"

"Nothing for months. We hear little of Monsea in this corner of the woods."

Katsa released her breath. "Hold your light to my face, storekeeper."

The man grunted. He extended his arm through the crack in the door and held the candle to Katsa's face. His eyes narrowed, then widened, and his entire manner changed. In an instant he'd opened the door, shuffled them through, and thrown the latch behind them.

"Forgive me, My Lady." He gestured to a table and began to pull out chairs. "Please, please sit down. Marta!" he called into an adjacent room. "Food," he said to the confused woman who appeared in the doorway, "and more light. And wake the – "

"No," Katsa said sharply. "No. Please, wake no one. No one must know we're here."

"Of course, My Lady," the man said. "You must forgive my... my..."

"You weren't expecting us," Katsa said. "We understand."

"Indeed," the man said. "We'd heard what happened at King Randa's court, My Lady, and we knew you'd passed through Sunder with the Lienid prince. But somewhere along the way the rumors lost track of you."

The woman came bustling back into the room and set a platter of bread and cheese on the table. A girl about Katsa's age followed with mugs and a pitcher. A boy, a young man taller even than Raffin, brought up the rear, and lit the torches in the walls around the table. Katsa heard a soft sigh and glanced at Bitterblue. The child stared, wide-eyed and mouth watering, at the bread and cheese on the table before her. She caught Katsa's eye. "Bread," she whispered, and Katsa couldn't help smiling.

"Eat, child," Katsa said.

"By all means, young miss," the woman said. "Eat as much as you like."

Katsa waited until everyone was seated, and until Bitterblue was contentedly stuffing her mouth with bread. Then she spoke.

"We need information," she said. "We need counsel. We need baths and any clothing – preferably boy's clothing – you might be able to spare. Above all, we need utter secrecy regarding our presence in this town."

"We're at your service, My Lady," the storekeeper said.

"We've enough clothing in this house to dress an army," his wife said. "And any supplies you'll need in the store. And a horse, I warrant, if you're wanting one. You can be sure we'll keep quiet, My Lady. We know what you've done with your Council and well do for you whatever we can."

"We thank you."

"What information do you seek, My Lady?" the storekeeper asked. "We've heard very little from any of the kingdoms."

Katsa's eyes rested on Bitterblue, who tore into the bread and cheese like a wild thing. "Slowly, child," she said, absently. She rubbed her head and considered how much to tell this Sunderan family. Some things they needed to know, and certainly the one thing most likely to combat the influence of whatever deception Leck spread next was the truth.

"We come from Monsea," Katsa said. "We crossed the mountains through Grella's Pass."

This was met with silence, and a widening of eyes. Katsa sighed.

"If that's hard for you to believe," she said, "you'll find the rest of our story no less than incredible. Truly, I'm unsure where to start."

"Start with Leck's Grace," Bitterblue said around her mouthful of bread.

Katsa watched the child lick crumbs from her fingers. Bitterblue looked as if she were approaching a state of rapture that even the story of her father's treachery couldn't disturb. "Very well," Katsa said. "We'll start with Leck's Grace."

Katsa took not one bath that night, but two. The first to loosen the dirt and peel off the top layer of grime, the second to become truly clean. Bitterblue did the same. The storekeeper, his wife, and his two eldest children moved quietly and efficiently, drawing water, heating water, emptying the tub, and burning their old, tattered garments. Producing new clothing, boy's clothing, and fitting it to their guests. Gathering hats, coats, scarves, and gloves from their own cabinets and from the store. Cutting Bitterblue's hair to the length of a boy's, and trimming Katsa's so it lay close to her scalp again.

The sensation of cleanliness was astonishing. Katsa couldn't count the number of times she heard Bitterblue's quiet sigh. A sigh at being warm and clean, at washing oneself with soap; and at the taste of bread in one's mouth, and the feeling of bread in one's stomach.

"I'm afraid we won't get much sleep tonight, child," Katsa said. "We must leave this house before the rest of the family wakes in the morning."

"And you think that bothers me? This evening has been bliss. The lack of sleep will be nothing."

Nonetheless, when Katsa and Bitterblue lay down in a bed for the first time in a very long time – the bed of the storekeeper and his wife, though Katsa had protested their sacrifice – Bitterblue dropped into an exhausted sleep. Katsa lay on her back and tried not to let the calm breath of her bed companion, the softness of mattress and pillow delude her into believing they were safe. She thought of the gaps she'd left in the story she'd told that night.

The family of the storekeeper now understood the horror that was King Leck's Grace. They understood Ashen's murder and the events surrounding the kidnapping of Grandfather Tealiff. They'd surmised, though Katsa had never told them explicitly, that the child eating bread and cheese as if she'd never seen it before was the Monsean princess who fled her father. They even understood that if Leck chose to spread a false story through Sunder, their minds might lose the truth of everything she'd told them. All of this the family marveled at, accepted, and understood.

Katsa had omitted one truth, and she had told one lie. The truth omitted was their destination. Leck might be able to confuse this family into admitting the lady and the princess had knocked on their door and slept under their roof. But he'd never be able to talk them into revealing a destination they didn't know.

The lie told was that the Lienid prince was dead, killed by Leck's guards when he'd tried to murder the Monsean king. Katsa supposed this lie was a waste of her breath. The opportunity for the family to speak of it would never arise. But when she could, she would make Po out to be dead. The more people who thought him dead, the fewer people would think to seek him out and do him harm.

To the Sunderan port cities they must now go. Ride south to sail west. But her thoughts as she lay beside the sleeping princess tended east, to a cabin beside a waterfall; and north, to a workroom in a castle and a figure bent over a book, a beaker, or a fire.

How she wished she could take Bitterblue north to Randa City and hide her there as they'd hidden her grandfather. North to Raffin's comfort, Raffin's patience and care. But even ignoring the complications of her own status at Randa's court, it was impossible. Unthinkable to hide the child in such an obvious place, and so close to Leck's dominion; unthinkable to take this crisis to those Katsa held most dear. She would not entangle Raffin with a man who took away all reason, and warped intention. She would not lead Leck to her friends. She would not involve her friends at all.

She and the child would start tomorrow. They would ride the horse into the ground. They would find passage to Lienid, and she would hide the child; and then she would think.

She closed her eyes and ordered herself to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Katsa's first view of the sea was like her first view of the mountains, though mountains and sea were nothing like each other. The mountains were silent, and the sea was rushing noise, calm, and rushing noise again. The mountains were high, and the sea was flatness reaching so far into the distance she was surprised she couldn't see the lights of some faraway land twinkling back at her. They were nothing alike. But she couldn't stop staring at the sea, or breathing in the sea air, and thus had the mountains affected her.

The cloth tied over her green eye limited her view. Katsa itched to tear it off, but she dared not, when they'd made it this far, first through the outskirts of this city and finally through the city streets themselves. They'd moved only at night, and no one had recognized them. Which was the same as saying she hadn't had to kill anyone. A scuffle here and there, when thugs on a dark street had grown a little too curious about the two boys slipping southward toward the water at midnight. But never recognition, and never more trouble than Katsa could handle without arousing suspicion.

This was Suncliff, the largest of the Sunderan port cities and the one with the heaviest traffic in trade. A city that by night struck Katsa as run-down and grim, crowded with narrow, seedy streets that seemed as if they should lead to a prison or a slum, and not to this astonishing expanse of water. Water stretching out, filling her, erasing any consciousness of the drunkards and thieves, the broken buildings and streets at her back.

"How will we find a Lienid ship?" Bitterblue asked.

"Not just a Lienid ship," Katsa said. "A Lienid ship that hasn't recently been to Monsea."

"I could check around," Bitterblue said, "while you hide."

"Absolutely not. Even if you weren't who you are, this place would be unsafe. Even if it weren't night. Even if you weren't so small."

Bitterblue wrapped her arms tightly around herself and turned her back to the wind. "I envy you your Grace."

"Let's go," Katsa said. "We must find a ship tonight, or we spend tomorrow hiding under the noses of thousands of people."

Katsa pulled the girl into the protection of her arm. They worked their way across the rocks to the streets and stairways that led down to the docks.

The docks were eerie at night. The ships were black bodies as big as castles rising out of the sea, skeleton masts and flapping sails, with voices of invisible men echoing down from the riggings.

Each ship was its own little kingdom, with its own guards who stood, swords drawn, before the gangplank, and its own sailors who came and went from deck to dock or gathered around small fires on shore. Two boys moving among the ships, bundled against the cold and carrying a couple of worn bags, were far from noteworthy in this setting. They were runaways, or paupers, looking for work or passage.

A familiar lilt in the conversation of one group of guards caught Katsa's ear. Bitterblue turned to her, eyebrows raised. "I hear it," Katsa said. "We'll keep walking, but remember that ship."

"Why not speak to them?"

"There are four of them, and there are too many others nearby. If there's trouble I'll never be able to keep it quiet."

Katsa wished suddenly for Po, for his Grace, so they might know if they were recognized, and if it mattered. If Po were here, he would know with a single question whether those Lienid guards were safe.

Of course, if Po were here their difficulty of disguise would be multiplied manyfold; between his eyes and the rings in his ears, and his accent, and even his manner of carrying himself, he would need to wear a sack over his head to avoid drawing attention. But perhaps the Lienid sailors would do anything their prince wished, despite what they'd heard? She felt his ring lying cold against the skin of her breast, the ring with the engravings that matched his arms. This ring was their ticket if any Lienid ship was to serve them willingly, and not in response to the threat of her Grace or the weight of her purse. Though she would capitulate to her Grace or her purse if necessary.

They slipped past a group of smaller ships whose guards seemed to be involved in some kind of boasting match between them. One group Westeran and another "Monsean," Bitterblue whispered, and though Katsa didn't change her gait, her senses sharpened and her whole body tingled with readiness until they'd left those ships behind and several more beyond them. They continued on, blending into the darkness.

The sailor sat alone at the edge of a wooden walkway, his feet dangling over the water. The dock on which he sat led to a ship in an unusual state of activity, the deck swarming with men and boys. Lienid men and boys, for in ears and on fingers, in the light of their lanterns, Katsa caught flashes of gold. She knew nothing of ships, but she thought this one must either have just arrived or just be departing.

"Do ships set out in the dead of night?" she asked. "I have no idea," Bitterblue said.

"Quickly. If it's on its way out, all the better." And if that lone sailor gave them trouble, she could drop him into the water and trust the men rushing across the deck of the ship above not to notice his absence.

Katsa slipped up onto the walkway, Bitterblue close behind. The man perceived them immediately. His hand went to his belt.

"Easy, sailor," Katsa said, her voice low. "We've only a few questions."

The man said nothing, and kept his hand at his belt, but he allowed the two figures to approach. As Katsa sat beside him, he shifted and leaned away – for better leverage, she knew, in case he decided to use his knife. Bitterblue sat next to Katsa, hidden from the man by Katsa's body. Katsa thanked the Middluns for the darkness and their heavy coats, which hid her face and her form from this fellow.

"Where does your ship come from last, sailor?" Katsa asked.

"From Ror City," he answered in a voice little deeper than hers, and Katsa knew him to be not a man but a boy – broad and solid, but younger than she.

"You depart tonight?"

"Yes."

"And where do you go?"

"To Sunport and South Bay, Westport, and Ror City again."

"Not to Monport?"

"We have no trade with Monsea this time around."

"Have you any news of Monsea?"

"It's clear enough we're a Lienid ship, isn't it? Find a Monsean ship if it's Monsean news you're wanting."

"What kind of man is your captain," Katsa asked, "and what do you carry?"

"This is a good many questions," the boy said. "You want news of Monsea and news of our captain. You want where we've been and what we're carrying. Is Murgon employing children to be his spies, then?"

"I've no idea who Murgon employs to be his spies. We seek passage," Katsa said, "west."

"You're out of luck," the boy said. "We don't need extra hands, and you don't look the type to pay."

"Oh? Graced with night vision, are you?"

"I can see you well enough to know you for a pair of ragamuffins," the boy said, "who've been fighting, by the looks of that bandage on your eye."

"We can pay."

The boy hesitated. "Either you're lying, or you're thieves. I'd wager both are true."

"We're neither." Katsa reached for the purse in the pocket of her coat. The boy unsheathed his knife and jumped to his feet.

"Hold, sailor. I only reach for my purse," Katsa said. "You may take it from my pocket yourself, if you wish. Go on," she said, as he hesitated. "I'll keep my hands in the air and my friend will stand away."

Bitterblue stood and backed up a few steps, obligingly. Katsa stood, her arms raised away from her body. The boy paused, and then reached toward her pocket. As one hand fiddled to uncover the purse, the other held the knife just below Katsa's throat. She thought she ought to appear nervous. Yet another reason to be grateful for the darkness that made her face unreadable.

Her purse finally in hand, the boy backed up a step or two. He opened it and shook a few gold pieces into his palm. He inspected the coins in the moonlight, and then in the firelight glimmering dimly from shore.

"This is Lienid gold," he said. "Not only are you thieves, but you're thieves who've stolen from Lienid men."

"Take us to your captain and let him decide whether to accept our gold. If you do so, a piece of it's yours – regardless of what he chooses."

The boy considered the offer, and Katsa waited. Truly, it didn't matter if he agreed to their terms or not, for they wouldn't find a ship better suited to their purposes than this one. Katsa would get them aboard one way or another, even if she had to clunk this boy on the head and drag him up the gangplank, waving Po's ring before the noses of the guards.

"All right," the boy said. He chose a coin from the pile in his palm and tucked it inside his coat. "I'll take you to Captain Faun for a piece of gold. But I warrant you'll find yourself thrown into the brig for thievery. She won't believe you came upon this honestly, and we don't have time to report you to the authorities in the city."

The word had not escaped Katsa's attention. "She? Your captain is a woman?"

"A woman," the boy said, "and Graced."

A woman and Graced. Katsa didn't know which should surprise her more. "Is this a ship of the king, then?"

"It's her ship."

"How – "

"The Graced in Lienid are free. The king doesn't own them."

Yes, she remembered that Po had explained this.

"Are you coming," the boy said, "or are we going to stand here conversing?"

"What's her Grace?"

The boy stepped aside and waved them forward with his knife. "Go on," he said. And so Katsa and Bitterblue moved up the dock, but Katsa listened for his answer. If this captain was a mind reader, or even a very competent fighter, she wanted to know before they reached the guards so she could decide whether to continue forward or shove this boy into the water and run.

Ahead of them, the guards spoke to each other and laughed at some joke. One of them held a torch. The flame strained against the wind and flashed across their rough faces, their broad chests, their unsheathed swords. Bitterblue gasped, ever so slightly, and Katsa shifted her attention to the child. Bitterblue was frightened. Katsa laid her hand on the girl's shoulder and squeezed.

"It'll be a swimming Grace," she said idly to the boy behind them, "or some navigational ability. Am I right?"

"Her Grace is the reason we leave in the middle of the night," the boy said. "She sees storms before they hit. We set out now to beat a blizzard coming up from the east."

A weather seer. The prescient Graces were better than the mind-reading Graces, better by far, but still they gave Katsa a crawling feeling along her skin. Well, this captain's profession was well suited to her Grace, anyway, and it wasn't adverse to their purposes – might even be advantageous. Katsa would meet this Captain Faun and measure her, then decide how much to tell her.

The guards stared at them as they approached. One held the torch to their faces. Katsa ducked her chin into the neck of her coat and stared back at him with her single visible eye. "What's this you're bringing aboard, Jem?" the man asked.

"They go to the captain," the boy said.

"Prisoners?"

"Prisoners or passengers. The captain will decide."

The guard gestured to one of his companions. "Go with them, Bear," he said, "and make sure no danger befalls our young Jem."

"I can handle myself," Jem said.

"Of course you can. But Bear can handle yourself, too, and himself, and your two prisoners, and carry a sword, and hold a light – all at the same time. And keep our captain safe."

Jem might have been about to protest, but at the mention of the captain he nodded. He took the lead as Katsa and Bitterblue climbed up the gangplank. Bear fell in behind them, his sword swinging in one hand and a lantern raised in the other. He was one of the largest men Katsa had ever seen. As they stepped onto the deck of the ship, sailors moved aside, partly to stare at the two small and bedraggled strangers and partly to get out of Bear's way. "What's this, Jem?" voices asked. "We go to the captain," Jem responded, over and over, and the men fell away and went back to their duties.

The deck was long, and it was crowded with jostling men and with unfamiliar shapes that loomed to all sides of them and cast strange shadows against the light of Bear's lantern. A sail billowed down suddenly, released from its confinement in the riggings. It flapped over Katsa's head, glowing a luminous gray, looking very much like an enormous bird trying to break its leash and take off into the sky; and then it rose again just as suddenly, folded and strapped back into place. Katsa had no idea what it all meant, all this activity, but felt a kind of excitement at the strangeness and the rush, the voices shouting commands she didn't recognize, the gusting wind, the pitching floor.

It took her about two steps to adjust to the tilt and roll of the deck. Bitterblue was not so comfortable, and her balance wasn't helped by her constant alarm at the happenings around her. Katsa finally took hold of the girl and held her close against her side. Bitterblue leaned into her, relieved, and relinquished to Katsa the job of keeping her upright.

Jem stopped at an opening in the deck floor. "Follow me," he said. He clamped his knife between his teeth, stepped into the blackness of the opening, and disappeared. Katsa followed, trusting the ladder she couldn't see to materialize beneath her hands and feet, pausing to help the child onto the rungs just above her. Bear climbed down last, his light casting their shadows against the walls of the narrow corridor in which they finally stood.

They followed Jem's dark form down a hallway. Bitterblue leaned against Katsa and turned her face against Katsa's breast. Yes, the air was stuffy down here, and stale and unpleasant. Katsa had heard that people got used to ships. Until Bitterblue got used to it, Katsa would keep her standing and breathing.

Jem led them past black doorways, toward a rectangle of orange light that Katsa guessed opened to the quarters of the Graced captain. The woman captain. Voices emanated from the lighted opening, and one of them was strong, commanding, and female.

When they reached the doorway the conversation stopped. From her place in the shadows behind the boy, Katsa heard the woman's voice.

"What is it, Jem?"

"Begging your pardon, Captain," Jem said. "These two Sunderan boys wish to buy passage west, but I don't trust their gold."

"And what's wrong with their gold?" the voice asked.

"It's Lienid gold, Captain, and more of it than it seems to me they should have."

"Bring them in," the voice said, "and let me see this gold." They followed Jem into a well-lit room that reminded Katsa of one of Raffin's workrooms, always cluttered with open books, bottles of oddly colored liquids, herbs drying from hooks, and strange experiments Katsa didn't understand. Except here, the books were replaced by maps and charts, the bottles by instruments of copper and gold Katsa didn't recognize, the herbs by ropes, cords, hooks, nets – items Katsa knew belonged on ships but didn't know the purpose of any more than she knew the purpose of Raffin's experiments. A narrow bed stood in one corner, a chest at its foot. This, too, was like Raffin's workrooms, for sometimes he slept there, in a bed he'd installed for those nights when his mind was more on his work than his comfort.

The captain stood before a table, a sailor almost as big as Bear at her side, a map spread out before them. She was a woman past childbearing years, her hair steel gray and pulled tightly into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her clothing like that of the other sailors: brown trousers, brown coat, heavy boots, and a knife at her belt. Her left eye pale gray, and her right a blue as brilliant as Katsa's blue eye. Her face stern, and her gaze, as she turned to the two strangers, quick and piercing. Katsa felt for the first time, in this bright room with this woman's bright eyes flashing over them, that their disguises had come to the end of their usefulness.

Jem dropped Katsa's coins into the captain's outstretched hand. "There's plenty more of it, too, Captain, in this purse."

The captain considered the gold in her hand. She raised narrowed eyes to Katsa and Bitterblue. "Where did you get this?"

"We're friends of Prince Greening of Lienid," Katsa said. "It's his gold."

The big sailor beside the captain snorted. "Friends of Prince Po," he said. "Of course they are."

"If you've stolen from our prince – " Jem began, but Captain Faun held up a hand. She looked at Katsa so hard that Katsa felt as if the woman's gaze were scraping at the back of her skull. She looked at Katsa's coat, at her belt, at her trousers, her boots, and Katsa felt naked before the intelligence of those uneven eyes.

"You expect me to believe that Prince Po gave a purse of gold to two raggedy Sunderan boys?" the captain finally asked.

"I think you know we're not Sunderan boys," Katsa said, reaching into the neck of her coat. "He gave me his ring so you may know to trust us." She pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out for the captain to see. She registered the woman's shocked expression, and then the outraged cries of Jem and Bear alerted her to the room's sudden descent into bedlam. They were lunging toward her, both of them, Jem brandishing his knife, Bear swinging his sword; and the sailor beside the captain had also pulled a blade.

Po could have mentioned that at the sight of his ring his people devolved into madness; but she would act now and contemplate her annoyance later. She swirled Bitterblue into the corner so that her own body was between the child and everyone else in the room. She turned back and blocked Jem's knife arm so hard that he cried out and dropped the blade to the floor. She knocked his feet out from under him, dodged the swing of Bear's sword, and swung her boot up to clock Bear on the head. By the time Bear's body had crumpled to the ground, Katsa held Jem's own knife to Jem's throat. Hooking her foot under Bear's sword and kicking it up into the air, she caught it with her free hand and held it out toward the remaining sailor, who stood just out of her range, knife drawn, ready to spring. The ring still dangled from its cord, gripped in the same hand that gripped the sword, and it was the ring that held the gaze of the captain.

"Stop," Katsa said to the remaining sailor. "I don't wish to harm you, and we're not thieves."

"Prince Po would never give that ring to a Sunderan urchin," Jem gasped.

"And you do your prince little honor," Katsa said, digging her knee into his back, "if you think a Sunderan urchin could've robbed him."

"All right," the captain said. "That's more than enough. Drop those blades, Lady, and release my man."

"If this other fellow comes toward me," Katsa said, pointing the sword at the remaining sailor, "he'll end up sleeping beside Bear."

"Come back, Patch," the captain said to her man, "and lower that knife. Do it," she said sharply, when Patch hesitated. The expression he shot at Katsa was ugly, but he obeyed.

Katsa dropped her blades to the floor. Jem stood, rubbed his neck, and focused a scowl in her direction. Katsa thought of a few choice words she would like to say to Po. She looped his ring back around her neck.

"What exactly have you done to Bear?" the captain asked. "He'll wake soon enough."

"He'd better."

"He will."

"And now you'll explain yourself," the captain said. "The last we heard of our prince, he was in the Middluns, at the court of King Randa. Training with you, if I'm not mistaken."

A noise came from the corner. They turned to see Bitterblue on her knees, huddled against the wall, vomiting onto the floor. Katsa went to the girl and helped her to her feet. Bitterblue clung to her clumsily. "The floor is moving."

"Yes," Katsa said. "You'll get used to it."

"When? When will I get used to it?"

"Come, child."

Katsa practically carried Bitterblue back to the captain. "Captain Faun," she said, "this is Princess Bitterblue of Monsea. Po's cousin. As you've guessed, I'm Katsa of the Middluns."

"I would also guess there's nothing wrong with that eye," the captain said.

Katsa pulled the cloth away from her green eye. She looked into the face of the captain, who met her gaze coolly. She turned to Patch and Jem, who looked back at her, understanding now, eyebrows high. So familiar, in the features of their faces, their dark hair, the gold in their ears. The evenness with which they looked into her eyes.

Katsa turned back to the captain. "The princess is in great danger," she said. "I'm taking her to Lienid to hide her from... from those who wish to harm her. Po said you would help us when I showed you his ring. But if you won't, I'll do everything in the power of my Grace to force your assistance."

The captain stared at her, eyes narrowed and face hard to read. "Let me see that ring more closely."

Katsa stepped forward. She wouldn't remove the ring from its place around her neck again, not when the sight of it inspired such madness. But the captain didn't fear her, and she reached out to Katsa's throat to take the gold circle in her fingers. She turned it this way and that in the light. She dropped the ring and narrowed her eyes at Bitterblue. She turned back to Katsa.

"Where is our prince?" she asked.

Katsa deliberated and decided that she must give this woman pieces, at least, of the truth. "Some distance from here, recovering from injury."

"Is he dying?"

"No," Katsa said, startled. "Of course not."

The captain peered at her, and frowned. "Then why did he give you his ring?"

"I told you. He gave it to me so that a Lienid ship would help us."

"Nonsense. If that's all he wanted, then why didn't he give you the king's ring, or the queen's?"

"I don't know," Katsa said. "I don't know the meanings of the rings, aside from which people they represent. This is the one he chose to give me."

The captain humphed. Katsa clenched her teeth and prepared herself to say something very caustic, but Bitterblue's voice stopped her.

"Po did give the ring to Katsa," she said miserably. Her voice was thick, her body hunched over itself. "Po meant for her to have it. And as he didn't explain what it meant, you should explain for him. Right now."

The captain considered Bitterblue. Bitterblue raised her chin, grim and stubborn. The captain sighed. "It's very rare for a Lienid to give away one of his rings, and almost unheard of for him to give away the ring of his own identity. To give that ring is to forsake his own identity. Princess Bitterblue, your lady has around her neck the ring of the Seventh Prince of Lienid. If Prince Po had truly given her that ring, it would mean that he'd abdicated his princehood. He'd no longer be a prince of Lienid. He'd make her a princess and give her his castle and his inheritance."

Katsa stared. She pulled at a chair and sat down hard. "That can't be."

"Not one in a thousand Lienid gives that ring away," the captain said. "Most wear it to their graves in the sea. But occasionally – if a woman is dying and wants a sister to take her place as the mother of her children, or if a dying shopkeeper wants his shop to go to a friend, or if a prince is dying and wants to change the line of succession – a Lienid will make a gift of that ring." The captain turned to glare at Katsa. "The Lienid love their princes, most especially the youngest prince, the prince. To steal Prince Po's ring would be considered a terrible crime."

But Katsa was shaking her head, from confusion that Po should have done such a thing, and from fear of the word the captain kept saying over and over. Dying. Po wasn't dying. "I don't want it," she said. "That he should give me this, and not explain – "

Bitterblue leaned against the table, her face gray, and moaned. "Katsa, don't worry. You can be sure he had some reason."

"But what reason would he have? His injuries weren't so bad – "

"Katsa." The child's voice was patient but tired. "Think. He gave you the ring before he was injured. It wasn't such a strange thing for him to do, knowing he might die in the fight."

Katsa saw then what it meant; and her hand went to her throat. It was just like him. And now she was fighting back tears because it was just the sort of mad thing he would get it into his mind to do – mad and foolish, far too kind, and unnecessary, because he wasn't going to die. "Why in the Middluns didn't he tell me?"

"If he had," Bitterblue said, "you wouldn't have taken it."

"You're right, I wouldn't have taken it. Can you see me taking such a thing from Po? Can you see me agreeing to such a thing? And he's right to have given it, because he is going to die, because I'm going to kill him when next I see him, for doing such a thing and frightening me and not telling me what it meant."

"Of course you will," Bitterblue said soothingly.

"It's not permanent, is it?" Katsa asked, turning to the captain. She then noticed for the first time that the captain was looking at her differently. So were Patch and Jem. Their faces white, and something shocked and quiet in their eyes. They believed her now, that she hadn't stolen the ring, and they believed that their prince had given it to her. And Katsa was relieved that at least that part of this ordeal was behind them. "I can give it back to him," she asked the captain, "can't I?"

The captain cleared her throat. She nodded. "Yes, Lady Princess."

"Great hills," Katsa said, distressed. "Don't call me that."

"You may give it back to him at any time, Lady Princess," the captain said, "or give it to someone else. And he may reclaim it. In the meantime, your position entitles you to every power and authority held by a prince of Lienid. It's ours to do your bidding."

"I'll be content if you'll take us quickly to Po's castle on the western shore," Katsa said, "and stop calling me Princess."

"It's your castle now, Lady Princess."

Katsa's temper was beginning to throw out sparks, for she wanted none of this treatment; but before she could argue, a man knocked on the door frame. "We're ready, Captain."

Katsa pulled Bitterblue to the side as the room erupted with commotion. The captain began to bark instructions. "Patch, get back to your post and get us out of here. Jem, see to Bear. And clean up that mess in the corner. I'm needed on deck, Lady Princess. Come above, if you wish. Princess Bitterblue's seasickness will be less there."

"I've told you not to call me that," Katsa said.

The captain ignored her and marched to the doorway. Katsa swept Bitterblue under her arm and followed her, glaring at the woman's back as they passed through the corridor. And then in the blackness at the foot of the ladder, the captain stopped. She turned back to Katsa. "Lady Princess," she said. "What you're doing here – and why you're disguised, and why the child princess is in danger – is your affair. I won't ask for an explanation. But if there's any assistance I can give, you need only to voice it. I'm at your service, completely."

Katsa reached to her breast and touched the circle of gold. She was thankful, after all, for the power it gave her, if that power would help her to serve Bitterblue. And that might be an explanation for Po's gift as well; perhaps he'd only wanted her to have full authority, so that she might protect the child better. But she didn't want everyone on deck to see the ring, if it inspired such adoration. She didn't want everyone talking about it and pointing it out and treating her this way. She loosened the neck of her coat and tucked the ring inside.

"Prince Po is recovering from his injuries?" Captain Faun asked; and Katsa heard the worry, the authentic worry, as if the captain were inquiring after a member of her own family. And Katsa also heard the royal title, less easily dropped from Po's name than added to her own.

"He's recovering," she said.

And it occurred to her to wonder then if the Lienid would love their prince so much if they knew the truth of his Grace.

It was all too confusing, all that had happened since she'd come aboard this vessel, and too many parts of it hurt her heart.

On deck, she led Bitterblue to the side of the ship. Together they breathed the sea air and watched the dark sparkle of the water.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face. The men laughed and told each other that Princess Katsa was a born sailor. To which Bitterblue added, once Bitterblue was well enough to come above deck and join in their banter, that Katsa was born to do anything normal people might consider terrifying.

What she really wanted was to climb into the highest riggings of the highest mast and hang down from the sky; and one clear day when Patch, who happened to be the first mate, sent a fellow named Red up to unravel a tangle of ropes, he told her to go along.

"You shouldn't encourage her," Bitterblue said to Patch, her hands on her hips and her face turned up to glare into his. Her countenance fierce, for all that she was a fifth Patch's size.

"Lady Princess, I reckon she'll go up there eventually with or without my say-so, and I'd rather it be now while I'm watching, than at night, or during a squall."

"If you think sending her up there now will keep her from – "

"Watch yourself," Patch said as the deck lurched and Bitterblue pitched forward. He caught her and lifted her into his arms. They watched Katsa climb hand and foot up the mast behind Red; and when Katsa finally looked down at them from her place in the sky, swinging so wildly back and forth that she marveled at Red's ability to untangle anything, she thought of how Bitterblue had trusted no man when first they'd met. And now the girl allowed this enormous sailor to pick her up and hold her, like a father, and the girl's arm was around Patch's neck, and she and Patch laughed up at Katsa together.

The captain predicted the journey would last four or five weeks, give or take. The ship moved fast, and most of the time they were alone on the ocean. Katsa never climbed up into the riggings without straining her eyes behind them for some sign of pursuit, but no one was after them. It was a relief not to feel hunted, and not to feel as if one must hide. It was safe on the open sea, isolated with Captain Faun and her crew, for not one sailor seemed to look upon them with suspicion, and she came gradually to trust that none had been touched by any rumors of Leck's.

"We weren't even a day in Suncliff," the captain told her. "You're lucky, Lady Princess. You have my Grace to thank for it."

"And for our speed," Katsa said. For it was a stormy winter at sea, and though they changed course so often their path must look like some odd dance across the water, they managed to avoid the worst of it. Their progress west was steady.

Katsa had told the captain of Leck's Grace and the reasons they fled, in the first few days when Bitterblue had been very sick and Katsa had had nothing to do but care for the girl and think. She'd told the captain because it had occurred to her, with a sinking feeling, that the forty-some men aboard this ship knew exactly who she and Bitterblue were and exactly where they were going. That made forty-some informants, once Katsa and Bitterblue were delivered to their destination and the ship returned to its trade route.

"I can vouch for the confidence of most of my men, Lady Princess," Captain Faun said. "Most, if not all."

"You don't understand," Katsa said. "Where King Leck is involved I can't even vouch for my own confidence. It's not good enough for them to swear to say nothing to no one. If one of Leck's stories touches their ears, they'll forget their vows."

"What would you have me do then, Lady Princess?"

Katsa hated to ask it, and so she stared at the charts on the table before them, pursed her lips, and waited for the captain to understand her. It didn't take long.

"You want us to remain at sea, once we've left you in Lienid," the captain said, her voice sharp and growing sharper as she spoke. "You want us to hold at sea, out of the way, all winter – longer, perhaps indefinitely – until you and Prince Po, who aren't even in communication, have found some way to immobilize the King of Monsea. At which point I suppose we must wait for someone to come in search of us and invite us back ashore? What's left of us, because we'll run out of supplies, Lady Princess – we're a trade vessel, you know, designed to sail from port to port and replenish our food and water at each stop. It's strain enough that we go now straight back to Lienid – "

"Your cargo hold is full of the fruits and vegetables of your trade," Katsa said, "and your men know how to fish."

"We'll run out of water."

"Then ride your ship into a storm," Katsa said.

The captain's face was incredulous. Katsa supposed it was an absurd suggestion – all of it absurd, for her to expect this ship to turn circles in some frozen corner of the sea, waiting for the approach of news that might never come. All for the safety of one young life. The captain made a noise part disbelief and part laughter, and Katsa prepared for an argument.

But the woman stared into her hands, thinking; and when she finally spoke, she surprised Katsa.

"You ask a great deal," she said, "but I can't pretend I don't understand why you ask it. Leck must be stopped, and not just for the sake of Princess Bitterblue. His Grace is limitless, and a king with his proclivities is a danger to all seven kingdoms. If my crew avoids any contact with gossip and rumors, that's forty-three men and one woman whose minds are clear to the task at hand."

"And," she continued, "I've promised to help you in any way I can."

It was Katsa's turn now to disbelieve. "You'll really do this thing?"

"Lady Princess," the captain said. "It's not in my power to refuse anything you ask. But this thing I'll do willingly, for as long as I can without endangering my men and my ship. And on the condition that I'll be reimbursed for my lost trade."

"That goes without saying."

"Nothing in business goes without saying, Lady Princess."

And so they made an agreement. The captain would hold at sea in a place near to Lienid, a specific place just west of an uninhabited island she could describe and another vessel could find, until such time as the other vessel came for her, or circumstances aboard her ship rendered it impossible for her isolation to continue.

"I've no idea what I'll tell my crew," the captain said.

"When the time comes for explanations," Katsa said, "tell them the truth."

The captain asked Katsa and Bitterblue one day, as they sat in the galley over a meal, how they'd gotten to Suncliff without being seen.

"We crossed the Monsean peaks into Sunder," Katsa said, "and traveled through the forests. When we reached the outskirts of Suncliff, we traveled only by night."

"How did you cross the mountain pass, Lady Princess? Wasn't it guarded?"

"We didn't cross at the mountain pass. We took Grella's Pass."

The captain peered at Katsa over the cup she'd raised to her face. She set the cup down. "I don't believe you."

"It's true."

"You crossed Grella's Pass and kept your fingers and toes let alone your lives? I might believe it of you, Lady Princess, but I can't believe it of the child."

"Katsa carried me," Bitterblue said.

"And we had good weather," Katsa added.

The captain's laugh rang out. "It's no use lying to me about the weather, Lady Princess. It's snowed in Grella's Pass every day since summer, and there are few places in the seven kingdoms colder."

"Nonetheless, it could have been worse the day we crossed." The captain was still laughing. "If I ever need a protector, Lady Princess, I hope to find you nearby."

A day or two later, after Katsa had come up from one of the frigid ocean baths she liked to take – the baths that Bitterblue considered further proof she was mad – she sat on Bitterblue's bunk and peeled away her soaking clothing. Their quarters were barely big enough for the two bunks they slept in and badly lit by a lantern that swung from the ceiling. Bitterblue brought Katsa a cloth to dry her wet skin and frozen hair. She reached out to touch Katsa's shoulder. Katsa looked down and saw, in the wavering light, the lines of white skin that had caught the girl's attention. The scars, where the claws of the mountain lion had torn her flesh. Lines on her breast, too.

"You've healed well," Bitterblue said. "There's no question who won that fight."

"For all that," Katsa said, "we weren't evenly matched, and the cat had the advantage. On a different day it would've killed me."

"I wish I had your skill," Bitterblue said. "I'd like to be able to defend myself against anything."

It wasn't the first time Bitterblue had said something like that. And it was only one of countless times Katsa had remembered, with a stab of panic, that Bitterblue was wrong; that in her one and only encounter with Leck, Katsa had been defenseless.

Still, Bitterblue didn't have to be as defenseless as she was. When Patch teased her one day about the knife she wore sheathed at her belt – the same knife, big as her forearm, she'd carried since the day Katsa and Po had found her in Leck's forest – Katsa decided the time had come to make a threat of Bitterblue. Or as much of a threat as the child could be. How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people – girls, women – went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

And so Katsa began to teach the girl. First to feel comfortable with a knife in her hand. To hold it properly, so that it wouldn't slip from her fingers; to carry it easily, as if it were a natural extension of her arm. This first lesson gave the child more trouble than Katsa had anticipated. The knife was heavy. It was also sharp. It made Bitterblue nervous to carry an open blade across a floor that lurched and dipped. She held the hilt much too tightly, so tightly her arm ached and blisters formed on her palm.

"You fear your own knife," Katsa said.

"I'm afraid of falling on it," Bitterblue said, "or hurting someone with it by accident."

"That's natural enough. But you're just as likely to lose control of it if you're holding it too tightly as too loosely. Loosen your grip, child. It won't fall from your fingers if you hold it as I've taught you."

And so the child would relax the hand that held the knife, until the floor tipped again or one of the sailors came near; and then she would forget what Katsa had said and grip the blade again with all her strength.

Katsa changed tactics. She put an end to official lessons, and instead had Bitterblue walk around the ship with the knife in her hand all afternoon for several days. Knife in hand, the child visited the sailors who were her friends, climbed the ladder between decks, ate meals in the galley, and craned her neck to watch Katsa scrambling around in the riggings. At first she sighed often and passed the knife heavily from one hand to the other. But then, after a day or two, it seemed not to bother her so much. A few days more and the knife swung loosely at her side. Not forgotten, for Katsa could see the care she took with the blade when the floor rocked, or when a friend was near. But comfortable in her hand. Familiar. And now, finally, it was time for the girl to learn how to use the weapon she held.

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 wa s 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.

"I can't deny that, Lady Princess. No one would know that better than you, or Prince Po. I imagine the two of you could whip a whole troop of children into a decent army."

A vision of Po, dizzy and unsteady on his feet, flashed into Katsa's mind. She pushed it away. She went to check on Bear and focused her thoughts on Bitterblue's next drill.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Katsa was in the riggings with Red when she first saw Lienid. It was just how Po had described it; and it was unreal, like something out of a tapestry, or a song. Dark cliffs rose from the sea, snow-covered fields atop them. Rising from the fields a pillar of rock, and atop the rock, a city. Gleaming so bright that at first Katsa was sure it was made of gold.

As the ship drew closer she saw that she wasn't so wrong. The buildings of the city were brown sandstone, yellow marble, and white quartz that sparkled with the light from sky and water. And the domes and turrets of the structure that rose above the others and sprawled across the skyline were, in fact, gold: Ror's castle and Po's childhood home. So big and so bright that Katsa hung from the riggings with her mouth hanging open. Red laughed at her and yelled down to Patch that one thing, at least, stilled the Lady Princess's climbing and scrambling.

"Land ho!" he called then, and men up and down the deck cheered. Red slithered down, but Katsa stayed in the riggings and watched Ror City grow larger before her. She could make out the road that spiraled from the base of the pillar up to the city, and the platforms, too, rising from fields to city on ropes too thin for her eyes to discern. When the ship skirted the southeast edge of Lienid and headed north, she swung around and kept the city in her sight until it disappeared. It hurt her eyes, almost, Ror City; and it didn't surprise her that Po should come from a place that shone.

Or a land so dramatically beautiful. The ship wound around the island kingdom, north and then west, and Katsa barely blinked. She saw beaches white with sand, and sometimes with snow. Mountains disappearing into storm clouds. Towns of stone built into stone and hanging, camouflaged, above the sea. Trees on a cliff, stark and leafless, black against a winter sky.

"Po trees," Patch said to her when she pointed them out. "Did our prince tell you? The leaves turn silver and gold in the fall. They were beautiful two months ago."

"They're beautiful now."

"I suppose. But Lienid is gray in the winter. The other seasons are an explosion of color. You'll see, Lady Princess."

Katsa glanced at him in surprise, and then wondered why she should be surprised. She would see, if she stayed here long enough, and likely she'd be here some time. Her plans once they reached Po's castle were vague. She would explore the building, learn its hiding places, and fortify it. She would set a guard, with whatever staff she found there. She would think and plan and wait to hear something of Po or Leck. And just as she fortified the castle, she would fortify her mind, against any news she heard that might carry the poison of Leck's lies.

"I know what you've asked us to do, Lady Princess," Patch said beside her.

This time she looked at him with true surprise. He watched the passing trees, his face grave.

"Captain Faun told me," he said. "She's told a few of us – a very few. She wants a number of us on her side when the time comes to tell the rest."

"And are you on her side, then?" Katsa asked.

"She brought me to her side, eventually."

"I'm glad," Katsa said. "And I'm sorry."

"It isn't your doing, Lady Princess. It's the doing of the monster who's the King of Monsea."

A light snow began to fall. Katsa reached her hands out to meet it.

"What do you think is wrong with him, Lady Princess?" Patch asked.

Katsa caught a snowflake in the middle of her palm. "What do you mean, wrong with him?"

"Well, why does it pleasure him to hurt people?" Katsa shrugged. "His Grace makes it so easy."

"But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people," Patch said. "It doesn't mean they do."

"I don't know," Katsa said, thinking of Randa and Murgon and the other kings and their senseless acts. "It seems to me that a fair number of people are happy to be as cruel as their power allows, and no one's more powerful than Leck. I don't know why he does it, I only know we need to stop him."

"Do you think Leck knows where you are, Lady Princess?"

Katsa watched flakes melting into the sea. She sighed.

"We crossed paths with very few people," she said, "once we left Monsea. And we told no one our destination, until we boarded this ship. But – he saw both of us, Patch, both me and Po, and of course he recognized us. There are only a few places we could hide the child. He'll look for her here eventually. I must find a place to hide, in the castle or on the lands. Or even someplace in the Lienid wilderness."

"The weather will be harsh, Lady Princess, until spring."

"Yes. Well, I may not be able to keep her comfortable. But I'll keep her safe."

Po had said his castle was small, more akin to a large house than a castle. But after seeing the way Ror's castle filled the sky, Katsa wondered if Po's scale of measure might differ from other people's. Randa's castle was large. Ror's was gargantuan. Where Po's fit in was yet to be seen.

When she finally did see Po's castle, she was pleased. It was small, or at least it seemed it from her position in the riggings of the ship far below. It was simply built of whitewashed stone, the balconies and the window frames painted a blue to match the sky, and only a single square tower, rising somewhere from the back, to suggest it was more than a house. Its position, of course, was far from simple, and its position pleased Katsa even more than its simplicity. A cliff reached up and out from the water, and the castle balanced at the cliff's very edge. It looked as if it might tumble forward at any moment, as if the wind might find purchase in some crack in the foundations, and tip the castle, creaking and screaming, over the drop and into the sea. She could understand why the balconies were dangerous in winter. Some of them hung over empty space.

Below the castle, the sea threw itself against the base of the cliff. But there was one nook in the rock, one small inlet where water broke and foamed onto sand. A tiny beach. And a stairway leading up from the beach, rising against the side of the cliff, turning back on itself, disappearing occasionally, and climbing finally up the side of the castle and onto one of those dizzying balconies.

"Where will we dock?" she asked the captain when she'd scrambled down to the deck.

"There's a bay on the other side of this rise of rock, some distance beyond the beach. We'll dock there. A path leads up from the bay and away from the castle – you'll think you're going the wrong way, Lady Princess – but then it loops back, and takes you up a great hill to the castle's front. There may be snow, but the path is kept clear in case the prince returns."

"You speak as if you know it well."

"I captained a smaller ship a few years back, Lady Princess, a supply ship. The castles of Lienid are all beautifully situated, but believe me when I tell you they're none of them easy to supply. It's a steep path to the door."

"How large a staff does he keep?"

"I'd expect very few people, Lady Princess. And I'll remind you that it's your castle at the moment, and your servants, though you continue to refer to them as his."

Yes, this she knew; and it was one of the reasons she wasn't looking forward to her first encounter with the inhabitants of the castle. The appearance of Lady Katsa of the Middluns, renowned thug, in possession of Po's ring; the absurd, tragic story she had to tell about Leck and Ashen; and her subsequent intentions to turn the castle into a fortress and cut off contact with the outside world. Katsa had a feeling it wouldn't go smoothly.

The path was just as Captain Faun had described, and the hill steep and ridged with drifts of snow. But the greater problem was Bitterblue's sea legs. She walked on land almost as clumsily as she'd walked at first at sea, and Katsa held her up as they climbed toward Po's front door. The wind gusted from behind, so that it felt as if they were being blown up the hill.

The castle wasn't much more castlelike from this angle. It seemed a tall white house at the top of a slope, with a number of massive trees overshadowing a courtyard that would be pleasant in better weather; a great tower rising behind the trees; tall windows, high roofs, at least one widow's walk; stables to one side and a frozen garden to the other; and no indication, as long as one's ears didn't catch the crash of waves, that behind it all was a drop to the sea.

They reached the top of the hill. A gust of wind pushed them onto the colorful tiled surface of the courtyard. Bitterblue sighed, relieved to encounter flat land. They approached the house, and Katsa raised her fist to Po's great wooden door. Before she could knock, the door swung open and a rush of warmth hit their faces. A Lienid man stood before her, oldish, dressed like a servant in a long brown coat.

"Greetings," he said. "Please come into the receiving room. Quickly," the man said, as Katsa stood unmoving, startled by his hasty reception. "We're letting the heat escape."

The man ushered them into a dark hall. At first glance, Katsa saw high ceilings, a stairway leading to banistered passageways above, and at least three burning fireplaces. Bitterblue steadied herself on Katsa's arm.

"I'm Lady Katsa of the Middluns," Katsa began, but the man waved them forward toward a set of double doors. "This way," he said. "My master is expecting you." Katsa's jaw went slack with surprise. She stared at the man, incredulous. "Your master! Do you mean he's here? How is that possible? Where is he?"

"Please, My Lady," the servant said. "Come this way. The whole family is in the receiving room."

"The whole family!"

The man swept his hand toward the doors straight ahead. Katsa looked at Bitterblue and knew that the girl's astonished face must mirror her own. Certainly there had been time for Po to make his way home; Katsa and Bitterblue had been ages in the mountains. But how could he, in such health? And how leave his hiding place, without being seen? Why, how –

The man shooed them forward to the doors, and Katsa tried to formulate a question, any question.

"How long has the prince been here?" she asked.

"The princes have only just arrived," the man said, and before she could ask what he meant he opened the doors.

"How wonderful," a voice inside said. "Welcome, my friends! Come in and take your honored place among our happy circle!"

It was a familiar voice, and she caught Bitterblue and held the girl to her side when the child gasped and fell. Katsa looked up to see strangers sitting around the walls of a long room; and at the room's end, smiling and appraising them through a single eye, King Leck of Monsea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Welcome. Friends. Honored place. Happy circle.

Katsa felt immediately that there was something she didn't trust about this man who said such nice things, and in such a nice, warm voice. There was something about him, some quality that kept her senses strung out to a high readiness. She did not like him.

Still, his words were kind and welcoming, and this room of strangers smiled at him, and smiled at her, and there was no reason for her discomfort. No reason to dislike the man so instantly. She hesitated in the doorway, and stepped forward. She would proceed carefully.

The child was sick. Giving in finally, Katsa thought, to the dizzying steadiness under her feet. Bitterblue cried and clung to Katsa, and kept telling her to come away. "He's lying," she kept saying. "He's lying." Katsa looked at her blankly. Clearly the child didn't like this man, either. Katsa would take that into consideration.

"My daughter is ill. It pains me to see my daughter suffer," Leck said; and Katsa remembered and understood that this man was Bitterblue's father. "Help your niece," Leck said to a woman on his left. The woman jumped up and came toward them with outstretched arms.

"Poor child," the woman said. She tried to pull the girl away from Katsa, embracing her and murmuring to her comfortingly; but Bitterblue began to scream and slapped at the woman, and clung to Katsa like a crazed, frightened thing. Katsa took the child in her arms and shushed her, absently. She looked over Bitterblue's head at the woman who was somehow Bitterblue's aunt. The woman's face jarred into her mind. Her forehead, her nose were familiar. Not the color of her eyes, but the shape of them. Katsa glanced at the woman's hands and understood. This was Po's mother.

"She's hysterical," Po's mother said to Katsa.

"Yes," Katsa said. She held the child close. "I'll take care of her."

"Where's my son?" the woman asked, her eyes going wide with worry. "Do you know where my son is?"

"Indeed," Leck said in his booming voice. He tilted his head, and his single eye watched Katsa. "You're missing one of your party. I hope he's alive?"

"Yes," Katsa said – and then wondered, vaguely, if she'd meant to pretend he was dead. Hadn't she pretended once before that Po was dead? But why would she have done that?

Leck's eye snapped. "Is he really? Such wonderful news. Perhaps we can help him. Where is he?"

Bitterblue cried out. "Don't tell him, Katsa. Don't tell him where Po is, don't tell him, don't tell him – "

Katsa shushed the girl. "It's all right, child."

"Please don't tell him."

"I won't," Katsa said. "I won't." She bent her face into Bitterblue's hat and decided it was right not to tell this man where Po was, not when it upset the child so.

"Very well," Leck said. "I see how things are."

He was silent for a moment. He seemed to be thinking. His fingers fiddled at the hilt of a knife in his belt. His eyes slid to Bitterblue and lingered; and Katsa found herself pulling the child closer to her own body, and covering the child with her arms.

"My daughter isn't herself," Leck said. "She's confused, she's ill, her mind is disturbed; and she thinks that I would hurt her. I've been telling Prince Po's family about my daughter's illness." He swept his hand around the room. "I've been telling them about how she ran away from home after her mother's accident. About how you and Prince Po found her, Lady Katsa, and how you've been keeping her safe for me."

Katsa followed his gesture around the room. More familiar faces, one of them a man older than Leck, a king. Po's father. His features strong and proud, but a vagueness to his eyes. A vagueness to the eyes of everyone in this room, to these younger men who must be Po's brothers, and these women who must be their wives. Or was it a vagueness in her own mind that stopped her from seeing their faces clearly? "Yes," she said, to whatever comment Leck had just made. Something about Bitterblue's safety. "Yes. I've kept her safe."

"Tell me," Leek's voice boomed. "How did you leave Monsea? Did you cross the mountains?"

"Yes," Katsa said.

Leck threw back his head and laughed. "I thought you must have, when we lost track of you. I very nearly decided to sit back and wait. I knew you'd surface somewhere, eventually. But when I made inquiries, I learned that you weren't welcome at your own court, Lady Katsa. And it made me crazy, absolutely crazy, to sit around doing nothing while my dear child was – " His eye rested again on Bitterblue and he rubbed his hand over his mouth. "While my girl was apart from me. I decided to take a chance. I ordered my people to continue the search, of course, across the other kingdoms; but I decided to try Lienid myself."

Katsa shook her head, but the fog in her mind wouldn't clear. "You needn't have worried," she said. "I've kept her safe."

"Yes," he said. "And now you've brought her to me, straight to my doorstep, to my castle here on Lienid's western shore."

"Your castle," Katsa said dully. She had thought this was Po's castle. Or had she thought it was her own castle? No, that was absurd; she was a lady of the Middluns, and she had no castle. She must have misunderstood something someone said, somewhere.

"Now it's time for you to give my child back to me," Leck said.

"Yes," Katsa said, but it worried her to relinquish care of the girl, who had stopped struggling but was collapsed now against Katsa muttering nonsense to herself and whimpering. Repeating the words Leck said over and over, in whispered bewilderment, as if she were testing how they sounded in her own voice.

"Yes," Katsa said again. "I will – but not until she's feeling better."

"No," Leck said. "Bring her to me now. I know how to make her feel better."

Katsa truly did not like this man. The way he ordered her around – and the way he looked at Bitterblue, with something in his gaze Katsa had seen before but couldn't quite place. Bitterblue was Katsa's responsibility. Katsa raised her chin. "No. She'll stay with me until she's feeling better."

Leck laughed. He looked around the room. "The Lady Katsa is nothing if not contrary," he said. "But I don't suppose any of us should blame her for being protective. Well, no matter. I'll enjoy my daughter's company" – his eye flicked to the girl again – "later."

"And now will you tell me of my son?" the woman beside Katsa asked. "Why isn't he here? He isn't injured, is he?"

"Yes," Leck said. "Comfort an anxious mother, Lady Katsa. Tell us all about Prince Po. Is he nearby?"

Katsa turned to the woman, flustered, trying to work out too many puzzles at once. Certainly there were some things it was safe to say about Po; but weren't some topics meant to be kept quiet? The categories were blurring. Perhaps it was best to say nothing at all. "I don't wish to talk of Po," she said.

"Don't you?" Leck asked. "That's unfortunate. For I do wish to talk of Po."

He tapped the arm of his chair for a moment, thoughtfully.

"He's a strong young man, our Po," he continued. "Strong and brave. A credit to his family. But he's not without his secrets, is he?"

Katsa felt, suddenly, her nerves jangling to the tips of her fingers.

Leck watched her. "Yes," he said. "Po's a bit of a problem, isn't he?" He lowered his eyebrows and pursed his lips; and then he seemed to come to a decision. He looked around the room, at the various members of Po's family, and beamed. He spoke pleasantly.

"I had thought to keep something to myself," he said. "But it occurs to me now that Po is indeed very strong; and he may appear someday on our doorstep. And perhaps, in anticipation of that event, it would be best for me to tell you all something that may" – he smiled shortly – "have some bearing on how you receive him. For you see, my Lady Katsa," he said, his eye locking into hers, "I've been thinking quite a lot about our dear Po, and I've developed a theory. A theory that you'll all find fascinating, if a bit upsetting. Yes," he said, smiling into the puzzled faces that watched him. "It's always a bit upsetting to learn that one has been double-crossed, and by a member of the family. And you're the very person to test my theory on, Lady Katsa, because I think you may be in possession of Prince Po's truth."

Po's father and his brothers shifted in their chairs and furrowed their eyebrows; and Katsa's mind was numb with panic and confusion.

"It's a theory about Prince Po's Grace," Leck said.

Katsa heard a small breath beside her, from the woman who was Po's mother. The woman took one step toward Leck, and put her hand to her throat. "Wait," she said. "I don't know – " She stopped. She turned her eyes to Katsa, puzzled, afraid. And Katsa was on fire with bewilderment and with desperate alarm. She felt – she understood – she could almost just barely remember –

"I believe your Po has been hiding a secret from you," Leck said. "Tell me if I'm right, Lady Katsa, that Prince Po is actually – "

It was then, at last, that a bolt of certainty struck Katsa. In that moment she moved. She dropped the child, snatched the dagger from her belt, and threw. Not because she remembered Leck must die. Not because she remembered the truth of Po's Grace. But because she remembered that Po did have a secret, a terrible secret, the revelation of which would hurt him in some horrible way she felt deeply but couldn't remember – and here this man sat, the secret on the tip of his tongue. And she must stop him, somehow stop him; she must silence this man, before the ruinous words were said.

In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.

The dagger flew straight and true. It embedded itself in Leck's open mouth and nailed him to the back of his chair. He sat there, arms and legs sagging, his single eye wide and lifeless. Blood spilling around the hilt of the blade and down the front of his robes. And now women were screaming, and men were shouting in outrage, running toward her with swords drawn, and Katsa knew instantly she must be careful in this fight. She must not hurt Po's brothers and his father. And suddenly they stopped, because with one long look at Leck, Bitterblue staggered to her feet.

She placed herself before Katsa, pulled her own knife from its sheath, and held it shakily against them.

"You will not hurt her," Bitterblue said. "She did right."

"Child," King Ror said. "Move aside, for we don't wish to hurt you. You aren't well. Princess Bitterblue, you're protecting the murderer of your own father."

"I'm perfectly well now that he's dead," Bitterblue said, her voice growing stronger and her hand steadying. "And I'm not a princess. I'm the Queen of Monsea. Katsa's punishment is my responsibility, and I say she did right, and you will not hurt her."

She did seem well-competent with the knife in her hand, composed, and very determined. Po's brothers and his father stood in a semicircle, swords raised. Rings on their fingers and hoops in their ears. Like seven variations on Po, Katsa thought vaguely – but with no lights in their eyes. She rubbed her own eyes. She was tired, she couldn't quite think. Several women in the background were crying.

"She murdered your father," King Ror said again now, but wealdy. He raised his hand to his forehead. He peered at Bitterblue, puzzled.

"My father was evil," Bitterblue said. "My father had the Grace of deceiving people with his words. He's been deceiving you – about my mother's death, my illness, his intentions toward me. Katsa has been protecting me from him. Today she saved me altogether."

All their hands were to their heads. All their eyebrows were drawn, all their faces masks of bewilderment.

"Did he say – did Leck say that he owned this castle? Did he – " Ror's voice trailed away. His eyes stared into the rings on his hands.

Po's mother drew a shaky breath. She turned to her husband. "It seems possible to me that what Lady Katsa has done wasn't entirely unwarranted," she said. "He was clearly about to make some absurd accusation regarding our Po. I, for one, am willing to consider the possibility that he's been lying all along." She pressed her hand to her chest. "We should sit down and try to sort this out."

Her husband and her sons scratched their heads, nodded their heads vaguely. "Let's all sit," Ror said, waving his arms to the chairs. He glanced at Leck's body and started, as if he'd forgotten it sat there, slumped and bleeding. "Bring the chairs here, to the middle of the room, away from that – spectacle. Sons, help the ladies. There, there, they are crying. Princess – Queen – Bitterblue, will you repeat again the things you've just said? I confess my head is muddled. Sons, keep your swords drawn – there's no point in being careless."

"I'll disarm her," Bitterblue said, "if it will make you more comfortable. Please, Katsa," she said apologetically, holding out her hand.

Katsa reached into her boot and handed the child her knife, numbly. She sat in the chair that was brought to her and numbly registered the bustle of people forming a circle, the clanking of swords, the women wiping their faces and gasping, clinging to their husbands' arms. She dropped her head into her hands. For her mind was returning, and she understood now what she had done.

It was like a spell that fizzled away slowly, popping one bubble at a time, and leaving their minds empty. Truly empty; they spoke stupidly, slowly, straining to reconstruct a conversation they couldn't remember, even though every one of them had been present for it.

Ror couldn't even give straight answers to Bitterblue's questions, about when Leck had arrived in Lienid, what he'd said; what he'd done to convince them that Po's castle was his. To convince Ror to leave his city and his court and come to a remote corner of his kingdom, with his wife and his sons, and amuse Leck and subjugate himself to Leck, while Leck waited for a daughter who might never arrive. What things Leck had said during that waiting time came slowly, incredulously from Ror's lips. "I believe... I believe he told me that he would like to establish himself in my city. Beside my throne!"

"I believe he said something about my serving girls, something I won't repeat," Ror's queen said.

"He spoke of altering our trade agreements! I'm sure of it!" Ror exclaimed. "In favor of Monsea!"

Ror stood and began to stride around the room. Katsa rose woodenly, in respect for a rising king, but the queen pulled her back down. "If we stood every time he marched around we'd always be standing," she said. Her hand rested on Katsa's arm a bit longer than was necessary, and her gaze on Katsa's face. Her voice was gentle. The further the assembly moved toward unraveling Leck's manipulations, the more kindly the Queen of Lienid seemed to look upon the lady at her side.

Ror's fury escalated, and the fury of his sons, each shaking off his stupor and rising one by one. Shouting their outrage, arguing with each other about what had been said. "Is Po really all right?" one of them asked Katsa, one of the younger ones who paused before her chair and looked into her face. A tear dropped onto her cheek, and she left it to Bitterblue to tell their story, to tell truths about Leck that struck the assembly like arrows. That Leck had desired to hurt the child in some eerie, horrible way; that Leck had kidnapped Grandfather Tealiff; that Leck had murdered Ashen. That his men had nearly murdered Po. And now Ror's grief matched his fury, and he knelt on the floor sobbing, for his father and his son and especially his sister; and his sons' shouts grew even louder and more incredulous. Katsa thought dumbly that it was no wonder Po was so voluble. In Lienid everyone was, and everyone spoke at once. She wiped the tears from her face and fought against her own confusion.

When the young brother crouched before Katsa again and offered her his handkerchief, she took it and stared stupidly into his face. "Do you think Po's all right?" he asked. "Will you go back for him now? I'd like to go with you."

She wiped her face with the handkerchief. "Which one are you?"

The brother smiled. "I'm Skye. I've never seen anyone throw a dagger so fast. You're exactly as I imagined you."

He rose to his feet again and went to his father. Katsa held her stomach and tried to calm the sourness surging inside her. The fog of Leck's Grace was slower to leave her than to leave the others, and she was sick with what she'd done. Yes, Leck was dead, and that was a good thing. But it was because she'd used a dagger – a dagger – to stop someone talking. It was as violent as anything she'd ever done for Randa. And she hadn't even known what she was doing.

She must go to Po. She must leave them all to piece the truth together by themselves. It didn't matter, these details they picked apart and discussed and argued over, on and on, as the day turned to night. Bitterblue was saved, and that mattered; Po was alone and hurt, and struggling through a Monsean winter, and that mattered.

"Will you tell them about the ring?" Bitterblue asked her that night as Katsa sat in their bedroom forcing her sluggish mind to take stock of their supply situation.

"No," she said. "There's no need. It'll only worry them. The first thing I'll do when I reach Po is give it back to him."

"Will we leave very early?"

Katsa's eyes snapped to the child who stood before her, her face serious, one hand resting on the knife at her belt. The Queen of Monsea, in trousers and short hair, looking for all the world like a miniature pirate.

"You needn't come," Katsa said. "It'll be a difficult journey. Once we reach Monport we'll be traveling very fast, and I won't lessen my pace for your comfort."

"Of course I'm coming."

"You're the Queen of Monsea now. You can commission a great ship and travel in luxury. You can wait until the season turns."

"And fret, here in Lienid, until you send word that Po's all right? Of course I'll come with you."

Katsa looked into her lap and swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn't like to admit how it comforted her, to know Bitterblue would be with her for this. "We leave at first light," she said, "on a boat Ror's furnished from the village nearby. We go first to collect Captain Faun and resupply her ship. Then she'll take us to Monport."

Bitterblue nodded. "Then I'm going to take a bath and go to sleep. Where do you suppose I must go to find someone who'll bring hot water?"

Katsa smiled, mildly. "Ring the bell, Lady Queen. Po's servants are a bit overtaxed at the moment, I do believe; but for the ruler of Monsea, someone will come."

It was, in fact, Po's mother who came. She appraised the situation and produced a servant girl who swept Bitterblue off to another room, murmuring reassurances about the temperature of the water and curtsying as best she could with her arms full of towels.

Po's mother stayed behind and sat beside Katsa on the bed. She clasped her hands in her lap. The rings on her fingers caught the light from the fireplace and drew Katsa's eyes.

"Po told me you wear nineteen rings," she heard herself saying, senselessly. She took a breath. She gripped her forehead and tried, for the hundredth time, to drive from her mind the image of Leck nailed to his chair by her dagger.

The queen opened her hands and considered her rings. She closed them again, and looked sideways at Katsa. "The others think you remembered the truth, suddenly, about Leck," she said. "They think you remembered it suddenly and silenced him right away, before his lies caused you to forget again. And perhaps that is what happened. But I believe I understand why you found the strength to act at that moment."

Katsa looked back at the woman, at her calm face and quiet, intelligent eyes. She answered the question she saw in those eyes. "Po has told me the truth of his Grace."

"He must love you very much," the queen said, so simply that Katsa started. Katsa ducked her head.

"I was very angry," she said, "when first he told me. But I have... recovered from my anger."

It was a woefully inadequate description of her feelings, this Katsa knew. But the queen watched her, and Katsa thought the woman understood some of what she didn't say.

"Will you marry him?" the queen asked, so plainly that Katsa started again; but this she could answer as plainly. She looked into the queen's eyes.

"I won't ever marry," she said.

The queen's forehead creased in puzzlement, but she didn't say anything. She hesitated, and then spoke. "You saved my son's life in Monsea," she said, "and you saved it again today. I'll never forget it."

She stood, bent forward, and kissed Katsa's forehead, and for the third time since this woman's arrival, Katsa started with surprise. The queen turned and left the room, her skirts sweeping through the doorway. As the door closed behind her, and Katsa stared at the blankness where Po's mother had been, the image of Leck rose again into her mind.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Katsa kept to a far corner of the deck as Bear and Red and a number of other men hauled the ropes that swung Leck's coffin on board. She wished to have nothing to do with it, wished even that the ropes would snap and pitch Leck's body into the sea, to be torn apart by sea creatures. She climbed up the mast and sat alone in the riggings.

It was a grand procession of royalty that charted a course now to Monsea. For not only was Bitterblue a queen, but Prince Skye and King Ror attended her. His sister's child, Ror had pointed out, was a child. And even if she weren't, she returned to an impossible situation. A kingdom deeply under a spell; a kingdom that believed its king to be virtuous and its princess to be ill, weak, possibly even mad. The child queen could not be sent off trippingly to Monsea to announce that she was now in charge, and denounce the dead king an entire kingdom adored. Bitterblue would need authority, and she would need guidance. Both of these Ror could provide.

Ror would send Skye to Po. Silvern, Ror had sent on a different ship to the Middluns, to collect Grandfather Tealiff and bring him home. His remaining sons Ror had sent home to their families and their duties, turning a deaf ear to each son's insistence that his proper place was in Ror City, managing Ror's affairs. Ror left his affairs instead to his queen, as he always did when circumstances took him away from his throne. The queen was more than capable.

Katsa watched Ror, day after day, from her place in the riggings. She became familiar with the sound of his laughter, and his good-natured conversation that set the sailors at ease. There was nothing humble or compromising about Ror. He was handsome, like Po, and confident, like Po, and so much more authoritative in his bearing than Po could ever be. But – and this Katsa came gradually to understand – he was not drunk on his power. He might never dream of helping a sailor to haul a rope, but he would stand with the sailor interestedly while the sailor hauled the rope, and ask him questions about the rope, about his work, his home, his mother and father, his cousin who spent a year once fishing in the lakes of Nander. It struck Katsa that here was a thing she'd never encountered: a king who looked at his people, instead of over their heads, a king who saw outside himself.

Katsa took easily to Skye. He climbed occasionally into the riggings, gasping, his gray eyes flying wide with laughter every time the ship plunged into the trough of a wave. He sat near her, never quite as relaxed in his perch as she was in hers, but quiet, content, and good company.

"I thought, after meeting your family, that Po was the only male among you capable of silence," Katsa said to him once, when they'd sat for some time without speaking.

A smile warmed his face. "I'd jump into an argument quick enough if you wanted one," he said. "And I have a thousand questions I'd like to ask you. But I figure if you felt like talking – well, you'd be talking, wouldn't you? Instead of climbing up here nearly to be hurled to your death every time we crest a wave."

His company, and the friendly rumble of Ror's voice below. The small kindnesses of the sailors toward Bitterblue when the girl came onto the cold deck for exercise. Captain Faun, who was so competent and so steady, and who always met Katsa's eyes with respect. All these things comforted Katsa, and a tough little skin began to stretch across the wound that had opened in her when her dagger had hit Leck.

She found herself thinking of her uncle. How small Randa seemed now, how baseless in his power. How silly that such a person had ever been able to control her.

Control. This was Katsa's wound: Leck had taken away her control. It had nothing to do with self-condemnation; she couldn't blame herself for what had happened. How could it not have happened? Leck had been too strong. She could respect a strong opponent, as she'd respected the wildcat and the mountain. But no amount of humility or respect made it any less horrifying to have lost control.

"Forgive me, Katsa," Skye said once, as they hung together above the sea. "But there's one question I must ask you."

She had seen the puzzlement in his eyes at times before. She knew what he was going to ask.

"You're not my brother's wife, are you?"

She smiled grimly. "No."

"Then why do the Lienid on this ship call you Princess?"

She took a breath, to ease the jarring of his question against her wound. She reached into the neck of her coat and pulled the ring out for him to see.

"When he gave it to me," she said, "he didn't tell me what it meant. Nor did he tell me why he gave it."

Skye stared at the ring. His face registered astonishment, then dismay, then a stubborn, self-willed sort of denial. "He'll have some rational reason for it," he said.

"Yes," Katsa said. "I intend to beat it out of him."

Skye laughed a short laugh, and lapsed into silence. A crease of worry lingered low on his forehead. And Katsa knew that the tough scar that formed over the ache within her had as much to do with her future lack of control as her past. She could not make Po be well, any more than she had been able to make herself think clearly in Leck's presence. Some things were beyond her power, and she had to prepare herself for whatever she found when she reached Po's cabin at the base of the Monsean mountains.

The delay, once the ship had docked in Monport and the party had disembarked, was unbearable. The captain of the Monport guard and the nobles of Leck's court stationed in Monport had to be summoned and made to understand the incredible truths Ror presented to them. The search for Bitterblue, still under way, had to be called off, as did the instructions to take Katsa alive and Po dead. Ror's tone on this last point froze into something very cold.

"Has he been found?" Katsa interrupted.

"Has... has who?" the captain of the Monport guard asked, stupidly, his hand to his head, his manner afflicted with a vagueness the Lienid party recognized.

"Have your men found the Lienid prince?" Ror snapped; and then more gently, as the eyes of the captain and the nobles moved confusedly to Skye, "the younger prince. He's a Graceling, with silver and gold eyes. Has anyone seen him?"

"I don't believe he's been seen, Lord King. Yes, I'm quite sure that's correct. We've not found him. Forgive me, Lord King. This story you've told... my memory..."

"Yes," Ror said. "I understand. We must go slowly."

Katsa could have torn the city down stone by stone, so wild did it make her to go slowly. She began to stalk back and forth behind the Lienid king. She crouched to the floor and grasped her hair. The conversation droned on. It would take hours – hours – for these men to disengage themselves from Leck's spell, and Katsa couldn't bear it.

"Perhaps we could see to some horses, Father," Skye murmured, "and be on our way?"

Katsa shot to her feet. "Yes," she said. "Yes, in the name of the Middluns, please."

Ror glanced from Skye to Katsa, and then to Bitterblue. "Queen Bitterblue," he said, "if you'll trust me to manage this situation in your absence, I see no reason to delay you."

"Of course I trust you," the child said, "and my men will defer to your judgment in all things while I'm gone."

The captain and the nobles stared openmouthed at their new queen, half Ror's height, dressed like a boy, and utterly dignified. They furrowed their eyebrows and scratched their heads, and Katsa was ready to scratch her own eyes out. Ror turned to her.

"The sooner you reach Po, the better," he said. "I'll not keep you."

"We need two horses," Katsa said, "the fastest in the city."

"And you need a Monsean guard," Ror said, "for no one you pass will realize what has happened. Any Monsean soldiers who sight you will try to capture you."

Katsa flicked her hand impatiently. "Very well, a guard. But if they can't keep up with me, I'll leave them behind." She swung toward Skye. "I hope you ride as well as your brother."

"Or you'll leave him behind as well?" Ror said. "And the Monsean queen – if she's weighing down your horse, will you leave her behind? And the horse itself, I suppose, once it collapses from exhaustion and disuse?" He had drawn himself up very tall, and his voice was sharp. "Be rational, Katsa. You will take a guard, and it will ride before you and behind you. For the entire journey, is that clear? You carry the Queen of Monsea, and you travel with my son."

Katsa practically spit back at him. "Do you imagine that I need a guard to protect them from the soldiers of Monsea?"

"No," Ror snapped. "I have no doubt that you are more than capable of bringing the Monsean queen and my son and the rest of my sons and a hundred Nanderan kittens through an onslaught of howling raiders if you chose to." He drew himself up even taller. "You will listen to sense. It does none of us any good at this juncture for you to barrel through Monsea with the queen of the kingdom on your horse, killing her soldiers left and right. What exactly would that accomplish? You will travel with a guard, and the guard will make your explanations and ensure that you're not attacked. Am I clear?"

He didn't wait to know if he was clear. He turned abruptly to the captain, who flinched at the entire exchange as if it hurt his head. "Captain, the four fastest horsemen in your guard," he said, "and your six fastest horses, immediately." He swung back on Katsa and glared down at her. "Have you regained your reason?" he roared.

It was her temper she had lost, not her reason – or if it was her reason, it returned to her now, with the promise of four fast horsemen, six fast horses, and a thundering ride to Po.

They rode fast and passed few people. The Port Road was wide, its surface a mixture of dirt and snow tramped down under the hooves of innumerable horses. Banks of snow rose on either side of the road, and fields of snow beyond them. Far to the west, they could just make out the dark line of the forest, and the mountains beyond. The air was icy, but the child on the horse before her was warm enough, and content to be pushed harder than was comfortable. The queen on the horse before her, Katsa thought, correcting herself. And Queen Bitterblue was very changed from the skittish creature she and Po had cajoled from the inside of a hollow log months ago. Bitterblue would make a good ruler someday. And Raffin a good king; and Ror was strong and capable and would live a long time. That was three of the seven kingdoms in good hands. Three of seven, however inadequate it seemed, would be a vast improvement.

There were towns along the Port Road, towns with inns. The party stopped occasionally for a hasty meal, or to seek shelter from the bitter late-winter nights. Their guard was the only thing that made this possible, for every soldier in every room they entered jumped up at the sight of them, hand to weapon, and remained in that guise until the explanations of the guard, and some words from Bitterblue, relaxed his vigilance. At one inn, the guard's explanations came too slowly. A marksman across an empty room fired an arrow that would have hit Skye, had Katsa not jumped on the prince and knocked him to the floor. She was up again before Skye had even registered his fall, her body blocking the queen's and her own arrow drawn; but the guards had intervened, and by then it was over. Katsa had hauled Skye up. She'd looked into his eyes and understood what had happened.

"He thought you were Po," she said to Skye. "That archer. He saw the hoops in your ears, the rings, and the dark hair, and he fired before he saw your eyes. You should wait until the guards have spoken, from now on, before entering a room."

Skye kissed her forehead. "You saved my life."

Katsa smiled. "You Lienid are very outward in your affection."

"I'm going to name my firstborn child after you."

Katsa laughed at that. "For the child's sake, wait for a girl. Or even better, wait until all your children are older and give my name to whichever is the most troublesome and obstinate."

Skye burst into laughter and hugged her, and Katsa returned his embrace. And realized that quite without her intending it, her guarded heart had made another friend.

The party was swept upstairs to the briefest of sleeps. The archer was taken away, most likely to be punished soundly for loosing an arrow so close to a small gray-eyed girl who happened to be Bitterblue. And if the people living in the towns and traveling the roads did not yet know the details of Leck's death, or suspect his treachery, at least it began to be understood in Monsea that Bitterblue was safe, Bitterblue was well, and Bitterblue was queen.

The road was clear and swift, but the road didn't lead straight to Po. The party turned west eventually into fields piled high with ice and snow, and Katsa felt the slackening of their pace severely. The horses labored to break a path through snow that reached sometimes to their shoulders.

Days later the party burst under the cover of the forest, and this was easier going. And then the land began to rise, and the trees to peter out. Soon they were climbing. They swung down from their mounts, all except for the queen, and picked their way uphill on foot.

They were nearly there, nearly there; and Katsa drove her companions fiercely, dragging the horses, emptying her mind of everything but their ferocious progress forward.

"I believe we've lamed one of the horses," Skye called up to her, early one morning when they were so close she could feel her body humming with it. She stopped and turned to look back. Skye gestured to the horse he was leading. "See? I'm sure the poor beast is limping."

The animal's head drooped, and it sighed deeply through its nostrils. Katsa grasped for her patience. "It's not limping," she said. "It's only tired, and we're nearly there."

"How can you say that when you haven't even seen it take one step?"

"Well, step, then."

"I can't until you've moved."

Katsa glared at him, murderously. She clenched her teeth. "Hold on tight, Lady Queen," she said to Bitterblue, who sat on her horse. She gripped the animal's halter and yanked the beast forward.

"Still doing your best to ruin the horses, I see."

Katsa froze. The voice came from above rather than behind, and it didn't quite sound like Skye. She turned.

"I thought it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all that," he said – and there, he was there, standing straight, eyes glimmering, mouth twitching, and the path he'd plowed through the snow stretching behind him. Katsa cried out and ran, tackling Po so hard that he fell back into the snow and she on top of him. And he laughed, and held her tight, and she was crying; and then Bitterblue came and threw herself squealing on top of them; and Skye came and helped them all up. Po embraced his cousin properly. He embraced his brother, and they messed up each other's hair and laughed at each other and embraced again. And then Katsa was in his arms again, crying hot tears into his neck, and holding him so tightly he complained he could not breathe.

Po shook the hands of the smiling, exhausted guards and led the party, lame horse and all, up to his cabin.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The cabin was clean, and in better repair than it had been when they'd found it. A stack of wood stood outside the door; a fire burned brightly in the fireplace; the cabinet still stood crookedly on three legs, but the dust was gone: a handsome bow hung on the wall. Katsa absorbed all this in a glance. And that was enough of that, for it was Po she wanted to fill her eyes with.

He walked smoothly, with his old ease. He seemed strong. Too thin, but when she commented on it, he said, "Fish aren't particularly fattening, Katsa, and I've eaten little but fish since you left. I can't tell you how sick to the skies I am of fish." They brought out bread for him then, and apples, and dried apricots and cheese, and spread it across the table. He ate, and laughed, and declared himself to be in raptures.

"The apricots come from Lienid," Katsa said, "by way of Suncliff, and Lienid again, and a place in the middle of the Lienid seas, and finally Monport."

He grinned at her, and his eyes caught the light of the fire in the fireplace, and Katsa was very happy. "You have a story to tell me," he said, "and I can see it has a happy ending. But will you start at the beginning?"

And so they started at the beginning. Katsa supplied the major points, and Bitterblue the details. "Katsa made me a hat of animal furs," Bitterblue said. "Katsa fought a mountain lion." Katsa made snowshoes. Katsa stole a pumpkin. Bitterblue listed Katsa's achievements one by one, as if she were bragging about her older sister; and Katsa didn't mind. The amusing parts of the tale made it easier to relate the grim.

It was during the story of what had happened at Po's castle that Katsa's mind caught on something that had nagged at her. Po was distracted. He watched the table instead of the people speaking; his face was absent, he wasn't listening. At the very moment she recognized his inattention he raised his eyes to her. For an instant he seemed to see her and focus on her, but then he stared emptily into his hands again. She could have sworn a kind of sadness settled into the lines of his mouth.

Katsa paused in her story, suddenly – strangely – frightened. She studied his face, but she wasn't quite sure what she was looking for. "The long and the short of it is that Leck had us under his spell," she said, "until I had one flash of clarity and killed him." I'll tell you the truth of what really happened later, she thought to him.

He winced, perceptibly, and she was alarmed; but an instant later he was smiling as if nothing was wrong, and she wondered if she'd imagined it. "And then you came back," he said cheerily.

"As fast as we could," Katsa said, biting her lip, confused. "And now I've a ring to return to you. Your castle is a gorgeous place, just as you said."

The pain that broke across his face, the misery, was so acute that she gasped. It vanished as quickly as it had come but she'd seen it this time, she knew she'd seen it, and she could no longer mask her alarm. She shot up from her seat and reached out to him, not certain what she was going to do or say.

Po rose, too – did he check his balance? She wasn't sure, but she thought he might have. He took her hand and smiled. "Come out hunting with me, Katsa," he said. "You can try the bow I made."

His voice was light, and Skye and Bitterblue were smiling. Katsa felt that she was the only person in the world with any idea that something was wrong. She forced a smile. "Of course," she said. "I'd love to."

"What's wrong?" she asked, the instant they'd left the cabin behind.

He smiled slightly. "Nothing's wrong."

Katsa climbed hard and bit back her feeling. They tromped through a path in the snow she supposed Po had broken. They passed the pool. The waterfall was a mass of ice, with only the slightest living trickle in its middle.

"Did my fish trap work for you?"

"It worked beautifully. I still use it."

"Did his soldiers search the cabin?"

"They did."

"You made it to the cave all right, despite your injury?"

"I was feeling much better by then. I made it easily."

"But you would have been cold and wet."

"They didn't stay long, Katsa. I returned to the cabin soon after and built up the fire."

Katsa climbed a rocky rise. She grasped a thin tree trunk and pulled herself onto a hillock. A long, flat rock jutted up from the untouched snow. She plowed over to it and sat down. He followed and sat beside her. She considered him. He didn't look at her.

"I want to know what's wrong," she said.

He pursed his lips, and still he didn't look at her. His voice was carefully matter-of-fact. "I wouldn't force your feelings from you, if you didn't want to share them."

She stared at him, eyes wide. "True. But I wouldn't lie to you, as you're lying now when you say nothing's wrong."

A strange expression came over his face. Open, vulnerable, as if he were a child of ten years, trying to keep from crying. Her throat ached to see that look in his face. Po –

He winced, and the expression vanished. "Don't, please," he said. "It makes me dizzy, when you talk to me in my mind. It hurts my head."

She swallowed, and tried to think of what to say. "Your head still hurts, from your fall?"

"Occasionally."

"Is that what's wrong?"

"I've told you, nothing's wrong."

She touched his arm. "Po, please – "

"It's nothing worth your worry," he said, and he brushed her hand away.

And now she was shocked and hurt, and tears stung her eyes. The Po she remembered didn't flick away her concern, he didn't flinch from her touch. This wasn't Po; this was a stranger; and there was something missing here that had been there before. She reached into the neck of her coat and pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out to him.

"This is yours," she said.

He didn't even look at it; his eyes were glued to his hands. "I don't want it."

"What in the Middluns are you talking about? It's your ring."

"You should keep it."

She stared at him, disbelieving. "Po, what makes you think I would ever keep your ring? I don't know why you gave it to me in the first place. I wish you hadn't."

His mouth was tight with unhappiness, and still he stared into his hands. "At the time I gave it to you, I did so because I knew I might die. I knew Leck's men might kill me and that you didn't have a home. If I died I wanted you to have my home. My home suits you," he said, with a bitterness that stung her, and that she couldn't understand.

She found that she was crying. She wiped tears from her face, furiously, and turned away from him, because she couldn't stand the sight of him staring stone-faced into his hands. "Po, I beg you to tell me what's the matter."

"Is it so wrong that you should keep the ring? My castle is isolated, in a wild corner of the world. You'd be happy there. My family would respect your privacy."

"Have you gone raving mad? What are you going to do once I've taken your home and your possessions? Where are you going to live?"

His voice was very quiet. "I don't want to go back to my home. I've been thinking of staying here, where it's peaceful, and far away from everyone. I-I want to be alone."

She gaped at him, her mouth open.

"You should go on with your life, Katsa. Keep the ring. I've said I don't want it."

She couldn't speak. She shook her head, woodenly, then reached out and dropped the ring into his hands.

He stared at it, then sighed. "I'll give it to Skye," he said, "to take back to my father. He can decide what to do with it."

He stood, and this time she was certain he checked his balance. He trudged away from her, his bow in hand. He caught hold of the root of a shrubbery and pulled himself onto a ledge of rock. She watched as he climbed into the mountains, and away from her.

During the night, the sound of breathing all around her, Katsa tried to work it out. She sat against the wall and watched Po lying in a blanket on the floor beside his brother and the Monsean guards. He slept, and his face was peaceful. His beautiful face.

When he'd come back to the cabin after their conversation, with his bow in one hand and an armload of rabbits in the other, he'd unloaded his quarry contentedly on his brother and shrugged himself out of his coat. Then he'd come to her, where she sat brooding against the wall. He'd crouched before her, taken her hands in his and kissed them, and rubbed his cold face against them. "I'm sorry," he'd said; and she'd felt suddenly that everything was normal, and Po was himself, and they'd start again, fresh and new. Then over dinner, as the others bantered and Bitterblue teased her guards, Katsa watched Po withdraw. He ate little. He sank into silence, unhappiness in the lines of his face. And her heart ached so much to look at him that she walked out of the cabin and stumped around for ages alone in the dark.

At moments he seemed happy. But something was clearly wrong. If he would just... if he would only just look at her. If he would only look into her face.

And of course, if alone was what he needed, alone was what she would give. But – and she thought this might be unfair, but still she decided it – she was going to require proof. He was going to have to convince her, convince her utterly, that solitude was his need. Only then would she leave him to his strange anguish.

In the morning Po seemed cheerful enough; but Katsa, who was beginning to feel like a henpecking mother, registered his lack of interest in the food, even the Lienid food, spread across the table. He ate practically nothing, and then made some vague, unlikely remark about checking on the lame horse. He wandered outside.

"What's wrong with him?" Bitterblue asked.

Katsa's eyes slid to the child's face, and held her steady gray gaze. There was no point pretending she didn't know what Bitterblue meant. Bitterblue had never been stupid.

"I don't know," Katsa said. "He won't tell me."

"Sometimes he seems himself," Skye said, "and other times he sinks into a mood." He cleared his throat. "But I thought it might be a lovers' quarrel."

Katsa looked at him levelly. She ate a piece of bread. "It's possible, but I don't think so."

Skye raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Seems to me you'd know if it were."

"If only things were that simple," Katsa said, drily. "There's something strange about his eyes," Bitterblue said.

"Yes," Katsa said, "well, it's likely he has the strangest eyes in all seven kingdoms. But I'd have expected you to notice that before now."

"No," Bitterblue said. "I mean there's something di fferent about his eyes."

Something different about his eyes.

Yes, there was a difference. The difference was that he wouldn't look at her, or at any of them. Almost as if it pained his heart to raise his eyes and focus on another person. Almost as if –

An image flashed into her mind then, out of nowhere. Po falling through the light, a horse's enormous body falling above him. Po, slamming into the water face-first, the horse crashing in after him.

And more images. Po, sick and gray before the fire, the skin of his face bruised black. Po squinting at her and rubbing his eyes.

Katsa choked on her bread. She shot to her feet and knocked over her chair.

Skye thumped her back. "Great seas, Katsa. Are you all right?"

Katsa coughed, and gasped something about checking on the lame horse. She ran out of the cabin.

Po wasn't with the horses, but when Katsa asked after him, one of the guards pointed in the direction of the pool. Katsa ran behind the cabin and over the hill.

He was standing, his back to her, staring into the frozen pond. His shoulders slumped and his hands in his pockets.

"I know you're invincible, Katsa," he said without turning around. "But even you should put on a coat when you come outside."

"Po," she said. "Turn around and look at me."

He dropped his head. His shoulders rose and fell with one deep breath. He didn't turn around.

"Po," she said. "Look at me."

He turned then, slowly. He looked into her face. His eyes seemed to focus on hers, for just an instant; and then his eyes dropped. They emptied. She saw it happen; she saw his eyes empty.

She whispered. "Po. Are you blind?"

At that, something in him seemed to break. He fell to his knees. A tear made an icy track down his face. When Katsa went to him and dropped down before him, he let her come; the fight had gone out of him and he let her in. Katsa's arms came around him. He pulled Katsa against him, practically smothered her with his grip, and cried into her neck. She held him, simply held him, and touched him, and kissed his cold face.

"Oh, Katsa," he cried. "Katsa."

They knelt like that for a very long time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

That morning a squall kicked up. By afternoon the squall had turned into a gentle but soggy storm. "I can't bear the thought of more winter-weather travel," Bitterblue said, half asleep before the fire. "Now that we're here with Po, can't we stay here, Katsa, until it stops snowing?"

But on the heels of that storm came another, and after that storm another, as if winter had torn up the schedule and decided it wasn't going to end after all. Bitterblue sent two guards with a letter for Ror. Ror wrote back from Bitterblue's court that the weather was just as well; the more time Bitterblue gave him to sort out the stories Leck had left behind, the smoother and the safer her transition to the throne would be. He would plan the coronation for true spring, and she could wait out the storms for as long as she wished.

Katsa knew the cabin's close quarters were trying to Po, burdened as he was with his unhappy secret. But if everyone was staying, then at least he didn't have to justify quite yet his own intention not to leave. He kept his discomfort to himself and helped the guards lead the horses to a nearby rock shelter he claimed to have found during his recovery.

His story came out slowly, whenever he and Katsa were able to contrive ways to be alone.

The day of Katsa and Bitterblue's departure had not been easy for Po. He'd still had his sight, but it hadn't felt quite right to him; it had changed in some way his head was too muddled to quantify, some way that gave him a deep sense of misgiving.

"You didn't tell me," Katsa said. "You let me leave you like that."

"If I'd told you, you never would have gone. You had to go."

Po had stumbled his way to the cabin's bed. He'd spent most of that day lying on his unhurt side with his eyes closed, waiting for Leck's soldiers and for his dizziness to pass. He'd tried to convince himself that when his head cleared, his sight would, too. But waking the next morning, he'd opened his eyes to blackness.

"I was angry," he told her. "And unsteady on my feet. And I was out of food, which meant that I had to find my way to the fish trap. I couldn't be bothered. I didn't eat, that day or the next."

What had driven him finally to the pool was not his hunger. It was Leck's soldiers. He'd sensed them climbing the rocks toward the cabin. "I was up and stumbling," he told her, "before I even realized what I was doing. I was barreling around the cabin collecting my things; and then I was outside, finding a crack in a rock to hide them. I wasn't at my most lucid. I'm sure I must have fallen down, over and over. But I knew where the pool was, and I got myself to it. The water was awful, so cold, but it woke me, and it was less dizzying, somehow, to be swimming, rather than walking. I made it to the cave somehow, and somehow I pulled myself onto the rocks. And then, in the cave, with the soldiers shouting outside and my body so cold I thought I would bite off my own tongue with my chattering teeth – I found it, Katsa."

He stopped talking, and he was quiet for so long that she wondered if he'd forgotten what he'd been saying.

"What did you find?"

He turned his head to her, surprised. "Clarity," he said. "My thoughts cleared. There was no light in the cave; there was nothing to see. And yet I sensed the cave with my Grace, so vividly. And I realized what I was doing. Sitting in the cabin, feeling sorry for myself, when Leck was out there somewhere and people were in danger. In the cave it struck me how despicable that was."

The thought of Leck had brought Po back into the water, out of the cave and to the fish trap. Back to the cabin to fumble, numb from cold, with the lighting of the fire. The next few days were grim. "I was weak and dizzy and sick. I walked, at first, never farther than the fish trap. Then with Leck in my mind I pushed a bit farther. My balance was passable, if I was sitting still. I made the bow. With Leck in my mind, I began to practice shooting it."

His head dropped. Silence settled over him. And Katsa thought she understood the rest. Po had held the notion of Leck close to himself; Leck had given him a reason to reach for his strength. He'd driven himself toward health and balance. And then they'd returned to him with the happy news that Leck was dead. Po was left without a reason. Unhappiness had choked him once again.

The very fact of his unhappiness made him unhappy.

"I've no right to feel sorry for myself," he said to her one day, when they'd gone out into a quiet snowfall to fetch water. "I see everything. I see things I shouldn't see. I'm wallowing in self-pity, when I've lost nothing."

Katsa crouched with him before the pool. "That's the first truly idiotic thing you've ever said to me."

His mouth tightened. He picked up one of the rocks they used to bash through the ice. He lifted the rock above his head and drove it, hard, into the frozen surface of the pool; and finally she was rewarded with a low rumble of something that almost passed for a laugh. "Your brand of comfort bears some similarity to your tactical offense."

"You've lost something," she said, "and you've every right to feel sorrow for what you've lost. They're not the same, sight and your Grace. Your Grace shows you the form of things, but it doesn't show you beauty. You've lost beauty."

His mouth tightened again, and he looked away from her. When he looked back she thought he might be about to cry But he spoke tearlessly, stonily. "I won't go back to Lienid. I won't go to my castle, if I'm not able to see it. It's hard enough to be with you. It's why I didn't tell you the truth. I wanted you to go away, because it hurts to be with you when I can't see you."

She tilted her head back and considered his stormy expression. "This is very good," she said. "This is some excellent self-pity."

And then the rumble of his laughter again, and a kind of helpless heartache in his face that caused her to reach for him, take him into her arms, and kiss his neck, his snow-covered shoulder, his finger not wearing its ring, and every place that she could find. He touched her face gently. He touched her lips and kissed her. He rested his forehead against hers.

"I would never hold you here," he said. "But if you can bear this – if you can bear me behaving like this – I don't really want you to leave."

"I'll not go," Katsa said, "for a long time. I'll not go until you want me to; or until you're ready to go yourself "

He had quite a talent for playing a part. Katsa saw this now, because she saw the transformation now, whenever they were alone and he stopped pretending. To his brother and his cousin he presented strength, steadiness, health. His shoulders were straight, his stride even. When he couldn't hide his unhappiness, he played it as moodiness. When he couldn't find the energy to direct his eyes to their faces and pretend to see them, he played it as inattention. He was strong, cheerful – strangely distracted, perhaps, but healing well from grave injury. It was an impressive act – and for the most part, it seemed to satisfy them. Enough, at least, that they never had reason to suspect the truth of his Grace, which was ultimately all he was trying to hide.

When he and Katsa were alone, hunting, collecting water, or sitting together in the cabin, the disguise quietly fell from him. Weariness pulled at his face, his body, his voice. He put his hand out occasionally, to a tree or a rock, to steady himself.

His eyes focused, or pretended to focus, on nothing, ever. And Katsa began to understand that while some of his sorry state was attributable to plain unhappiness, an even larger part of it stemmed from his Grace itself. For he was still growing into it; and now that he no longer had vision to anchor his perception of the world, he was constantly overwhelmed.

One day beside the pool, during a rare break between snowstorms, she watched him notch an arrow calmly to his bow and aim at something she couldn't see. A ledge of rock? A tree stump? He cocked his head as if he were listening. He released the arrow, and it sliced through the cold and thwacked into a patch of snow. "What – " Katsa started to say, and then stopped when a spot of blood welled to the surface and colored the snow around the arrow's shaft.

"A rabbit," he said. "A big one."

He started forward toward his buried kill, but had taken little more than a step when a flock of geese swooped down from overhead. He put his hand to his temple and fell to one knee.

Katsa strung two arrows and shot two geese. Then she hauled Po up. "Po, what – "

"The geese. They took me by surprise."

She shook her head. "You could sense animals before, but the sense of them never knocked you down."

He snorted with laughter, and then his laughter fizzled into a sigh. "Katsa. Try to imagine how things are now My Grace shows me every detail of the mountain above me, and the drop to the forest below me. I feel the movement of every fish in the pool and every bird in the trees. The ice is growing back over our water hole. Snow is forming fast in the clouds, Katsa. In a moment I expect it'll be snowing again." He turned his face toward her now, urgently. "Skye and Bitterblue are in the cabin. Bitterblue's anxious about me, she doesn't think I eat enough. And you're here, too, of course – your every movement, your body, your clothing, your every worry coursing through me. The sighted can focus their eyes. I can't focus my Grace. I can't turn this off. How exactly, when I'm aware of everything above, below, before, behind, and beyond me, am I supposed to keep my mind on the ground beneath my feet?"

He trudged away from her toward the red patch of blood. He yanked tiredly at the arrow in the snow. It came away in his hand, and lifted with it a large, white, bloody rabbit. He plodded back to her, rabbit in hand. They stood there, considering each other; and then flakes of snow began to fall. Katsa could not help herself – she smiled, at the fulfillment of his prediction. A moment later Po smiled too, grudgingly; and when they turned to climb the rocks, he took her sleeve. "The snow's disorienting," he said.

They set out across the slope, and he steadied himself against her as they climbed.

She was getting used to the new way Po had of considering her, now that he couldn't see her. He didn't look at her, of course. She supposed she would never feel the intensity of his gaze again; she would never again be caught in his eyes. It was something she tried not to think about. It made her stupidly, foolishly sad.

But Po's new way with her was also intense. It was a kind of attentiveness in his face, a concentration in his body, directed toward her. When it happened she could feel the stillness of his face and body, attuned to her. She thought that it happened more and more as the days passed. As if he were reconnecting with her, slowly, and pulling her back into his thoughts. He touched her easily now, too, as he'd done before his accident – kissed her hands if she was nearby, or touched her face when she stood before him. And Katsa wondered if it was true, or just her imagination, that he was paying them, all of them, more attention – truer attention. As if perhaps he was less overwhelmed by his Grace. Or less absorbed with himself.

"Look at me," he said to her once, on one of the rare occasions when they had the cabin to themselves. "Katsa, do I seem to be looking at you?"

They were working with their knives before the fire, shaving the bark from the branches of a tree to make arrows. She turned to him and met his eyes, full on, gleaming directly into hers. She caught her breath and set her knife down, flushed with heat; and wondered, briefly, how long it would be before the others returned. And then Po's failed attempt to keep from grinning snapped her out of her daze.

"Dear wildcat. That was more of an answer than I reckoned for."

She snorted. "I see your self-esteem remains intact. And just what were you hoping to achieve?"

He smiled. His hands returned to their work, and his eyes emptied again. "I need to know how to make people think, conclusively, that I'm looking at them. I need to know how to look at Bitterblue so she stops thinking there's something strange about my eyes."

"Oh. Of course. Well, that ought to do it. How do you manage it?"

"Well, I know where your eyes are. It's mostly just a matter of direction, and then sensing your reaction."

"Do it again."

Her purpose was scientific this time. His eyes rose to hers, and she ignored the rush of heat. Yes, it did seem as if he saw her – although now that she studied his gaze, she could tell that there were small indications otherwise.

"Tell me," he said.

She considered him. "The light of your eyes is strange enough, and distracting enough, that I doubt anyone would notice. But you don't seem quite... focused. You're looking at me, but it's as if your mind is elsewhere. You understand?"

He nodded. "Bitterblue picks up on that."

"Narrow your eyes a bit," Katsa said. "Bring your eyebrows down, as if you were thinking. Yes – that's pretty convincing, Po. No one you direct that gaze toward will ever suspect a thing."

"Thank you, Katsa. Can I practice it with you, now and then? Without fear of you throwing me onto my back and forcing me out of my clothes?"

Katsa cackled at that and threw the shaft of an arrow at him. He caught it, neatly, and laughed; and she thought for a moment that he looked genuinely happy. And then, of course, he registered her thought, and a shadow settled across his face. He withdrew into his work. She glanced at his hands, at his finger still missing its ring. She took a breath and reached for another branch.

"How much does Bitterblue know?" she asked.

"Only that I'm keeping something from her. She knows my Grace is more than I've said. She's known it from the beginning."

"And your sight?"

"I don't think it's even occurred to her." Po smoothed the edge of a shaft with his knife and swept a pile of bark shavings into the fire. "I'll look her in the eyes more often," he said; and then he withdrew again into silence.

Po and Sicye teased Bitterblue endlessly about her entourage. It wasn't just the guards. Ror was taking the royal position of his sister's daughter very seriously. Soldiers were always arriving, leading horses piled high with supplies, especially as the winter storms began to wind down. Vegetables, breads, fruits; blankets, clothing, dresses for the queen; and always letters from Ror, asking Bitterblue's opinion on this or that matter, updating her on the plans for the coronation, and inquiring after the health of the various members of her party, particularly Po.

"I'm going to ask Ror to send me a sword," Bitterblue said one day at breakfast. "Katsa, will you teach me to use it?"

Skye's face lit up. "Oh, do, Katsa. I haven't seen you fight yet, and I was beginning to think I never would."

"And you imagine I'll make for an exciting opponent?" Bitterblue asked him.

"Of course not. But she'll have to stage a sword fight with a few of the soldiers, won't she, to show you how it's done? There must be a decent fighter or two among them."

"I'm not going to stage a sword fight with unarmored soldiers," Katsa said.

"What about a hand fight?" Skye sat back and folded his arms, a cockiness in his face that Katsa thought must be a family trait. "I'm not such a bad hand fighter myself."

Po exploded with laughter. "Oh, fight him, Katsa. Please fight him. I can't imagine a more entertaining diversion."

"Oh, it's that funny, is it?"

"Katsa could pound you into the ground before you even raised a finger."

Skye was unabashed. "Yes, exactly – that's what I want to see. I want to see you destroy someone, Katsa. Would you destroy Po for me?"

Katsa was smiling. "Po isn't easy to destroy."

Po hooked his feet to the legs of the table and rocked his chair backward. "I imagine I am these days."

"Returning to the question at hand," Bitterblue said, rather sternly. "I should like to learn to use a sword."

"Yes," Katsa said. "Well then, send word to Ror."

"Aren't two soldiers just leaving?" Po asked. "I'll catch them." The legs of his chair clattered down to the floor. He pushed away from the table and went outside. Three pairs of eyes lingered on the door that closed behind him.

"The weather's looking less like winter now," Bitterblue said. "I'm anxious to go to my court and get started with things. But I don't like to until I'm convinced he's well, and frankly, I'm not convinced."

Katsa didn't answer. She ate a piece of bread absentmindedly. She turned to Skye and considered his shoulders, strong and straight like his brother's; his strong hands. Skye moved well. And he was closest in age to Po; he'd probably fought Po a million times growing up.

She narrowed her eyes at the remains of their meal. She wondered what it would be like to fight with no eyes, and distracted by the landscape and the movement of every creature close at hand.

"At least he's finally eating," Bitterblue said.

Katsa jumped. She stared at the child. "He is?"

"He was yesterday, and he was this morning. He seems quite hungry, actually. You didn't notice?"

Katsa let out a burst of air. She pushed her own chair back and headed for the door.

She found him standing before the water, staring unseeing at its frozen surface. He was shivering. She watched him doubtfully for a moment. "Po," she said to his back, "where's your coat?"

"Where's yours?"

She moved to stand beside him. "I'm warm."

He tilted his head to her. "If you're warm and I'm coatless, there's only one friendly thing for you to do."

"Go back and get your coat for you?"

He smiled. Reaching out to her, he pulled her close against him. Katsa wrapped her arms around him, surprised, and tried to rub some warmth into his shivering shoulders and back. "That's it, exactly," Po said. "You must keep me warm." She laughed and held him tighter.

Po said, "Let me tell you something that's happened," and she leaned back and looked into his face, because she heard something new in his voice.

"You know I've been fighting my Grace all these months," he said, "trying to push it away. Trying to ignore most of what it shows me and concentrate on the little bit I need to know."

"Yes."

"Well, a few days ago in a fit of, well, self-pity, I stopped."

"You stopped?"

"Fighting my Grace, I mean. I gave up, I let it all wash over me. And you know what happened?" He didn't wait for her to guess. "When I stopped fighting all the things around me, all the things around me started to come together. All the activity, and the landscape, and the ground and the sky, and even people's thoughts. Everything's trying to form one picture. And I can feel my place in it like I couldn't before. I mean, I'm still overwhelmed. But nothing like before."

She bit her lip. "Po. I don't understand."

"It's easy, Katsa. It's as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus. I mean, think of us now, standing here. There's a bird in the tree behind me, do you see it?"

Katsa looked over his shoulder. A bird sat on a branch, plucking at the feathers under its wing. "I see it."

"Before, I would have tried to fight off my perception of the bird, so as to concentrate on the ground under my feet and you in my arms. But now I just let the bird, and everything else that's irrelevant, wash over me; and the irrelevant things fade away a bit, naturally. So that you are all of my focus."

Katsa was experiencing an odd sensation. It was as if a nagging ache had suddenly lifted and left her with a stunning absence of pain. It was relief and hope together. "Po. This is good."

He sighed. "It's a great comfort to be less dizzy."

She hesitated, and then decided she might as well say it, seeing as he probably already knew it. "I think it's time you started fighting again."

He smiled slightly. "Oh? Is that what you think?"

She rose nobly to the defensive. "And why not? It'll bring back your strength, improve your balance. Your brother makes a perfect opponent."

He touched his forehead to hers. His voice was very quiet. "Calm yourself, wildcat. You're the expert. If you think it's time I started fighting, then I suppose it's time I started fighting."

He was smiling still, and Katsa couldn't bear it, because it was the smallest and the saddest smile in all the world. But as he raised his fingers to touch her face, she saw that he was wearing his ring.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It became a kind of school. Katsa made up drills for Skye and Po that were first and foremost a challenge to Po's strength. Skye was satisfied, for the drills favored him. Katsa was satisfied, for she could see Po's progress. She set them always to wrestling, rarely to proper hand fighting, and reminded Po constantly, in his mind and out loud, to muscle rather than Grace his way out of every scrape.

Alongside the grappling brothers, Katsa taught Bitterblue to hold a sword, and then to block with one, and then to strike. Position and balance, strength and motion, speed. The child was as awkward at first with the sword as she had been with the knife, but she worked stubbornly, and like Po she made progress.

And Katsa's school grew. The guards and messengers couldn't resist the spectacle of the Lady Katsa teaching swordplay to their young queen, or the Lienid and his brother wrestling each other into the ground. They gathered round, asking this and that question about a drill she fabricated for the princes, or a trick she taught Bitterblue to compensate for the queen's lack of size and strength. Before Katsa knew it she was teaching the trick to a pair of young soldiers from Monsea's southern shore, and devising a drill to improve the opposite-hand swordplay of Bitterblue's guards. Katsa enjoyed it thoroughly. It pleased her to watch her students grow stronger.

And Po did grow stronger. He continued to lose at wrestling, but each time his defeat took longer, and still longer. His balance, his control, improved. The battles became increasingly amusing, partly because the brothers were so evenly matched and partly because as the snow melted the yard turned into a morass of mud. Of course they liked nothing better than to smear the mud in each other's faces. If it weren't for Po's eyes, most days the brothers would have been indistinguishable.

The day came when one of the mud-covered princes pinned the other to the ground and shouted his victory and Katsa looked over to find that the brother on top was, for the first time, Po. He leaped to his feet, laughing, and shot a wicked grin at Katsa. He wiped mud from his face and crooked his finger at her. "Come here, wildcat. You're next."

Katsa leaned on her sword and laughed. "It took you half an hour to pin your brother, and you think you're ready for me?"

"Come mud wrestle with me. I'll flatten you like a spider."

Katsa turned back to the exercise she was teaching Bitterblue. "When you can beat Skye easily, then I'll mud wrestle with you."

She spoke sternly, but she couldn't hide from him her pleasure. Nor could he hide his own. He comforted his poor moaning brother, who recognized, from his vantage point on the ground, the beginning of the end.

Katsa found him changed as an opponent – less because of the sight he'd lost than because of the sensitivity he'd gained with his growing Grace. When they fought now he could sense not just her body and her intention but the force of her blows before they struck, the direction of her momentum. Her balance and imbalance, and how to capitalize on it. He was not back to full strength yet, and sometimes his own balance still tricked him. But there were times now when he caught her by surprise, something neither of them was used to.

He was going to be as good a fighter as he'd been before, if not better. And this was important. The fights made Po happy.

Bitterblue did not stay long past the start of spring. Skye followed her sometime thereafter, summoned by his father to Leck City to assist with the imminent coronation. And finally Katsa and Po made the journey themselves to the city that was soon to assume Bitterblue's name. Po bore the traveling well, a bit like a child who's never traveled before and finds every experience fascinating, if slightly overwhelming. And indeed, when it came to traveling with his new way of perceiving the world, Po was an infant.

In their room in Bitterblue's castle, on the morning of the great event, Katsa suffered herself to put on a dress. Po, in the meantime, lay on the bed, grinning endlessly at the ceiling. "What are you grinning at?" Katsa demanded for the third or fourth time. "Is the ceiling about to cave in on my head or something? You look like we're both on the verge of an enormous joke."

"Katsa, only you would consider the collapse of the ceiling a good joke."

There was a knock at the entrance to their room then, and Po actually began to giggle. "You've been in the cider," Katsa said accusingly as she went to the door. "You're drunk."

And then she swung the door open and almost sat down on the floor in astonishment, because before her in the hallway stood Raffin.

He was muddy and smelled like horses. "Did we get here in time for the food?" he asked. "The invitation said something about pie, and I'm starving."

Katsa burst into laughter, and then into tears, and once she started hugging him she couldn't stop. Behind Raffin stood Bann, and behind Bann stood Oll, and Katsa hugged them and cried over them as well. "You didn't tell us you were coming," she kept saying. "You didn't tell us you were coming. No one ever even told me you were invited."

"And you're one to speak of sending word," Raffin said. "For months we didn't hear a thing from you – until one day Po's brother appeared at our court with the wildest story any of us had ever heard."

Katsa sniffled and wrapped her arms around her cousin again. "But you understand, don't you?" she said to his chest. "We didn't want to get you mixed up in it."

Raffin kissed the top of her head. "Of course we understand."

"Is Randa with you?"

"He didn't care to come."

"Is the Council well?"

"It's moving along swimmingly. Must we stand here clogging the hallway? I wasn't joking about starving to death. You're looking well, Po." Raffin peered doubtfully at Katsa's short hair. "Helda's sent you a hairbrush, Kat. Much use it'll be."

"I'll cherish it," Katsa said. "Now come inside."

Like any event requiring formal clothing, the crowning ceremony was tedious, but Bitterblue endured it with the appropriate gravity and poise. The rim of the great golden crown was padded with some thick purple material, to keep it from sliding down to rest on her nose. It looked, Katsa thought, as if it weighed as much as the girl herself did.

Katsa didn't mind the tedium, for Raffin was on one side of her and Bann on the other, and not five minutes passed without them amusing themselves in some way. When Bann whispered to her about Raffin's new medicinal discovery that cured bellyache but caused itchy feet, and his subsequent discovery that cured itchy feet but caused bellyache, Katsa giggled. Standing three rows ahead with his two sons, Ror whipped his head around to glare at her. "This is not a Sunderan street carnival," he whispered with great and dignified reproach. And Po's shoulders began to shake with laughter, and various voices whispered for Ror to shush but then realized whom they were shushing and issued an appalled stream of apology.

"Yes, all right," Ror was left saying, repeatedly and with increasing volume. "Truly, it's all right." The interruption grew to something rather large and intrusive, causing a coronation attendant to stumble in his litany of the Monsean rulers across time. Bitterblue smiled softly at the attendant, and nodded for him to continue. After that, word passed through the crowd that the young queen was kindhearted, and not one to punish small mistakes.

"And how is Giddon?" Katsa murmured to Raffin once things had settled down. She was feeling kindly toward her old suitor because she was happy and surrounded by friends.

Behind her, Oll cleared his throat. "He gets a bit mopey whenever your name is mentioned, Lady. I won't pretend I don't know why."

Raffin spoke quietly. "Randa keeps trying to marry him off, and Giddon keeps refusing. He spends more time than he used to on his own estate. But he gives himself completely to the work of the Council. He's an invaluable ally, Kat. I dare say he wouldn't object to seeing you someday. If you wanted to visit us at court, you know, we'd find a way of sneaking you in without Randa knowing. If you wished it. You haven't told us your plans."

Katsa smiled quietly. "I'll go back to the mountains with Po after this." It was all she said of her plans, because for the moment it was all she knew.

She tilted her head and rested it against her cousin's tall shoulder. The coronation passed in a blur of contentment.