Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(39)
Author: Kristin Cashore

She was a girl my age.”

She stopped for a moment, choked with tears. She wiped her face on her shoulder. “That’s when my mother decided we had to escape. We tied sheets and blankets together and dropped out through the windows. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it, for fear. But my mother talked me through it, all the way down.” She stared into the flames. “My mother killed a guard, with a knife. We ran for the mountains. We hoped the king would assume we’d taken the Port Road to the sea. But on the second morning we saw them coming after us, across the fields. My mother twisted her ankle in some foxhole. She couldn’t run. She sent me ahead, to hide in the forest.”

The girl breathed furiously, wiped her face again, clenched her hands into fists. Through some massive force of will , she stopped the fal of her tears. She grasped the knife that lay in her lap and spoke bitterly. “If I were trained in archery. Or if I could use a knife. Perhaps I could have killed my father when this whole thing started.”

“By some accounts, it’s too late,” Po said. “But I’ll kill him tomorrow, before he does anything more.”

Bitterblue’s eyes darted to his. “Why you? Why not her, if she’s the better fighter?”

“Leck’s Grace doesn’t work on me,” Po said. “It works on Katsa. This we learned today, when we met him in the fields. I must be the one to kill him, for he can’t manipulate me or confuse me as he can Katsa.”

He offered Bitterblue one of the quail, skewered on a stick. She took it and watched him closely. “It’s true that his Grace lost some of its power over me,” she said, “when he hurt my mother. And it lost some of its power over my mother when he threatened me. But why does it not work on you?”

“I can’t say,” Po said. “He’s hurt a lot of people. There may be many for whom his Grace is weak – but none likely to admit it, for fear of his vengeance.”

Bitterblue narrowed her eyes. “How did he hurt you?”

“He kidnapped my grandfather,” Po said. “He murdered my aunt before my eyes. He threatens my cousin.”

Bitterblue seemed satisfied by this; or, at least, she turned to her food and ate ravenously for a number of minutes.

She glanced at him occasional y, at his hands as he tended the fire.

“My mother wore a lot of rings, like you,” she said. “You look like my mother, excepting your eyes. And you sound like her, when you talk.” She took a deep breath and stared at the food in her hands. “He’l be camping in the forest tonight, and he’l be looking for me again tomorrow. I don’t know how you’l find him.”

“We found you,” Po said, “didn’t we?”

Her eyes flashed up into his and then back to her food. “He’l have his personal guard with him. They are all Graced.

I’ll tell you what you’l be facing.”

———

It was a simple enough plan. Po would set out early, before first light, with food, a horse, the bow, the quiver, one dagger, and two knives. He would work his way back into the forest and hide his horse. He would find the king – however long that took. He would come no closer to the king than the distance of the flight of an arrow. He would aim, and he would fire. He would ensure that the king was dead. And then he would run, as fast as he could, back to his horse and to the camp.

A simple plan, and Katsa grew more and more uneasy as they talked it through, for both she and Po knew that it would never play out so simply. The king had an inner guard, made up of five Graced sword fighters. These men were little threat to Po; they always stood beside the king, and Po expected never to step within their range. It was the king’s outer guard that Po must be prepared to encounter. These were ten men who would be positioned in a broad circle around Leck, some distance from him and from each other, but surrounding the king as he moved through the forest.

They were all Graced, some fighters, a couple crack shots with a bow. One Graced with speed on foot; one enormously strong; one who climbed trees and jumped from branch to branch like a squirrel. One with extraordinary sight and hearing.

“You will know that one by his red beard,” Bitterblue said. “But if you’re close enough to see him, then he’s most certainly spotted you already.

Once you’re spotted they’l raise the alarm.”

“Po,” Katsa said. “Let me come with you as far as the outer circle. There are too many of them, and you may need help.”

“No,” Po said.

“I would only fight them and then leave.”

“No, Katsa.”

“You’l never – ”

“Katsa.” His voice was sharp. She crossed her arms and glared into the fire. She took a breath and swal owed hard.

“Very well,” she said. “Go to sleep now, Po, and I’ll keep watch.”

Po nodded. “Wake me in a couple of hours and I’ll take over.”

“No,” she said. “You need your sleep if you’re to do this thing. I’ll keep watch tonight. I’m not tired, Po,” she said as he started to protest. “You know I’m not. Let me do this.”

And so Po dropped off to sleep, huddled in a blanket beside Bitterblue. Katsa sat in the dark and went over the plan in her mind.

If Po didn’t return to their camp above the gul y by sunset, then Katsa and Bitterblue must flee without him. For if he didn’t return, it might mean the king was not dead. If the king was not dead, then nothing would protect Bitterblue from him, except distance.

Leave Po behind, in this forest of soldiers. It was unimaginable to Katsa, and as she sat on a rock in the cold and the dark, she wouldn’t let herself think it. She watched for the slightest movement, listened for the small est sound. And refused to think about all that could happen tomorrow in the forest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Po woke in the early morning cold and gathered his things together quietly. He pulled Katsa close and held her against him. “I’ll come back,” he said; and then he was gone. She sat guard, as she had done all night, and watched the path he had taken. She held her thoughts in check.

She wore a ring on a string around her neck, a ring that Po had given her before he’d climbed onto the back of his horse and clattered across the cliff path. It was cold against the skin of her breast, and she fingered it as she waited for the sun to rise. It was the ring with the engravings that matched the markings on his arms. The ring of Po’s castle, and his princehood. If Po didn’t return today, then Katsa must take Bitterblue south to the sea. She must arrange passage somehow on a ship to Lienid’s western coast, and Po’s castle. No Lienid would detain her or question her, if she wore Po’s ring. They would know that she acted on Po’s instructions; they would welcome and assist her. And Bitterblue might be kept safe in Po’s castle while Katsa thought and planned and waited to hear something of Po.

When light came and Bitterblue awoke, she and Katsa led the horse down to the lake to drink and graze. They col ected wood, in case they stayed in this camp again that night. They ate winterberries from a clump of bushes beside the water. Katsa caught and gutted fish for their dinner.

When they climbed back up to the rock camp, the sun had not even topped the sky.

Katsa thought of doing some exercises, or of teaching Bitterblue to use her knife. But she didn’t want to attract attention with the noise it would make. Nor did she want to miss the slightest glimpse or sound of an approaching enemy, or of Po. There was nothing to do but sit stilland wait.

Katsa’s muscles screamed their impatience.

By early afternoon she was pacing back and forth across the camp, utterly stir-crazy. She paced, fists clenched; and Bitterblue sat against the boulders in the sun, knife in hand, watching her.

“Aren’t you tired?” Bitterblue asked. “When did you last sleep?”

“I don’t need as much sleep as other people,” Katsa said.

Bitterblue’s eyes followed her as she marched back and forth. “I’m tired,” Bitterblue said.

Katsa stopped and crouched before the girl. She felt Bitterblue’s hands and forehead. “Are you cold, or hot? Are you hungry?”

Bitterblue shook her head. “I’m only tired.”

And of course she was tired, her eyes big and her face tight. Any person in this situation would be tired. “Sleep,”

Katsa said. “It’s safe for you to sleep, and it’s best for you to keep up your strength.”

Not that the child would need her strength for flight that night, for doubtless at any moment, Po would come scrambling over the cliff path on his horse.

———

The sun crawled behind the western mountaintops and turned their rocky camp orange, and stillPo did not come.

Katsa’s mind was frozen into place. Surely he would materialize in the next few minutes; but just in case he did not, she woke Bitterblue. She pulled their belongings together and removed all trace of their fire. She scattered their firewood.

She saddled the horse and strapped their bags to the fine Monsean saddle.

Then she sat and stared at the cliff path that shone yel ow and orange in the fal ing light.

The sun was setting, and he hadn’t come.

She couldn’t help the thought, then, that shouldered its way into her mind – that wouldn’t be held back any longer, no matter how hard she pushed at it. Po could be in the forest, injured, the king could be murdered and all could be safe, and Po could be somewhere, needing her help, and she not able to give it because of the chance the king was alive. He could even be near, just beyond the cliff path, limping, stumbling toward them. Needing them, needing her; and she, in a matter of minutes, mounting her horse and gal oping it in the opposite direction.

They would go then, because they must. But they would backtrack just a bit, on the chance that he was near. Katsa glanced quickly around the rock camp to be sure they’d left no sign of their presence. “Wel then, Princess,” she said, “we’d better be going.” She avoided Bitterblue’s eyes and lifted her into the saddle. She untied the horse’s reins and handed them to the child.

And that’s when she heard the pebbles bouncing along the cliff path.

She raced back to the path. The horse was coming across the ledge along the top of the cliff, stumbling across, its head hanging. Too close, just a little too close to the drop. And Po lying on the horse’s back, unmoving; and an arrow, an arrow in his shoulder. His shirt soaked with blood.

And how many arrows in the horse’s neck and side she didn’t try to count, for suddenly pebbles were spraying over the cliff edge. The horse was slipping, and the whole path was sliding under its panicked hooves. She screamed Po’s name inside her mind, and ran. He raised his head, and his eyes flashed into hers. The horse shrieked and struggled madly for ground to stand on, but she couldn’t reach him in time.