Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(41)
Author: Kristin Cashore

He nodded, then winced.

“Tel us later, Po,” Katsa said. “Rest for now.”

“It’s a short story,” he said. “I finally decided my only option was to take out one of his guards. So I shot one. But the instant he fel , of course, the king jumped for cover. I shot again, and my arrow grazed Leck’s neck, but only barely. It was a job meant for you, Katsa. You’d have hit him squarely. I couldn’t do it.”

“Wel ,” Katsa said. I would never have found him in the first place. And even if I had, I would never have killed him.

You know that. It was a job meant for neither of us.

“After that, of course, his inner guard was after me,” Po said, “and then his outer guard, and his soldiers, too, once they’d heard the alarm. It – it was a bloodbath. I must have killed a dozen men. It was all I could do to get away, and then I rode north, to throw them off the track.” He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, then opened them again.

He squinted at Katsa. “Leck has a bowman who’s nearly as good as you, Katsa. You saw what he did to the horse.”

And he would have done the same to you, she thought to him. If it weren’t for your newfound ability to sense arrows as they fly toward you.

He smiled, ever so slightly. Then he squinted at Bitterblue.

“You’ve begun to trust me,” he said.

“You tried to kill the king,” Bitterblue said, simply.

“Al right,” Katsa said, “enough talking.”

She returned to the fire, and smothered it. They pushed Po up into the saddle again, and again she tied her charges to the horse. And in her mind, over and over, she warned Po, implored Po, to stop announcing aloud every little thing his Grace revealed to him.

———

In the light of day they moved faster, but the movement was hard on Po. He didn’t complain once about the bouncing of the horse. But his breath was short and his eyes flashed with a kind of wildness, and Katsa could recognize pain as easily as she recognized fear. She saw the pain in his face, and in the tightness of the muscles of his arms and his neck whenever she dressed his shoulder.

“Which hurts more?” she asked him in the early morning. “Your shoulder or your head?”

“My head.”

A person with an aching head shouldn’t be riding an animal whose every step reverberated like an axe to his skull ; but walking was out of the question. He had no balance. He was forever dizzy and nauseated. He was forever rubbing his eyes; they bothered him. At least the bleeding of his shoulder had slowed to a dribble. And talking no longer confused him; he seemed to remember, final y, to hide his Grace from his cousin. “We’re not moving fast enough,” he said several times that day. Katsa, too, chafed at their pace. But until his head improved, she wasn’t going to run the horse over the rocky hil s. Bitterblue was more of a help than Katsa could have hoped. She seemed to consider Po her special charge. Whenever they stopped, she helped him settle onto a rock. She brought him food and water. If Katsa stepped away for a minute to chase a rabbit, when she returned Bitterblue was cleaning Po’s shoulder and wrapping it in clean bandages. Katsa became accustomed to the sight of Po swaying above his little cousin, his hand resting on her shoulder.

By the time the sun began to set, Katsa felt the fatigue of the last few days and the last few sleepless nights. Po and Bitterblue were asleep on the horse’s back. Perhaps if Po rested now, he would be able to stand some sort of watch later and give her some few hours’ sleep. The horse, too, needed rest. They couldn’t stop for the whole night, not when they traveled at this pace. But a few hours. A few hours’ rest might be possible.

When he woke again in the moon’s pale light, he cal ed her back to him. He helped her find a hol ow in a ring of rocks that would hide the light of a fire. “We’re not moving fast enough,” he said again, and she shrugged, for there was little to be done about it. She woke Bitterblue, untied her, and slid her down from the horse. Po slid himself down, carefully.

“Katsa,” he said. “Come here, my Katsa.”

He reached for her, and she came to him. He wrapped his arms around her. His hurt shoulder slow and stiff, but his unhurt arm strong and warm. He held her tight, and she held him steady. She rested her face in the hol ow of his neck, and a great sigh rose within her. She was so tired, and he was so unwel . They weren’t moving fast enough. But at least they could stand with their arms around each other, and she could feel his warmth against her face.

“There’s something we need to do,” he said, “and you’re not going to like it.”

“What is it?” she murmured into his neck.

“We – ” He took a breath and stopped. “You need to leave me lpehind.”

“What?” She pulled away from him. He swayed, but grabbed at the horse to steady himself. She glared at him, and then stormed after Bitterblue, who was col ecting branches for the fire. Let him cope for himself. Let him make his own way to the campfire if he was going to make such absurd statements.

But he didn’t move. He just stood beside the horse, his arm clutching the animal’s back, waiting for someone to help him; and tears rose to her eyes at the sight of Po’s helplessness. She went back to him. Forgive me, Po. She gave him her shoulder and led him across the rocky ground to the place where they would make their fire. She sat him down and crouched before him. She felt his face; his forehead burned. She listened to his breath and heard pain in its shortness.

“Katsa,” he said. “Look at me. I can’t even walk. The most important thing right now is speed, and I’m holding you back. I’m no more than a burden.”

“That’s not true. We need your Grace.”

“I can tell you they’re seeking you,” he said, “and I can promise you they’l continue to seek you, as long as you’re in Monsea. I can tell you they’re likely to find your trail, and I can tell you that once they do, the king will be on your heels. You don’t need me with you, to repeat that over and over.”

“I need you to keep my mind straight.”

“I can’t keep your mind straight. The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you. Running is the only hope for the child.”

Bitterblue came beside them then, with an armload of sticks and branches. “Thank you, Princess,” Katsa said to her.

“Here, bring the rabbit I caught. I’ll build the fire.” She would think about the fire, and she would pay Po no attention.

“If you left me behind,” Po said, “you could ride fast. Faster than an army of soldiers.”

Katsa ignored him. She piled twigs together and focused on the flame growing between her hands.

“He will catch up with us, Katsa, if we continue at this pace. And you won’t be able to defend either of us from him.”

Katsa added more twigs to her fire and blew on the flames, gently. She piled sticks on top of the twigs.

“You have to leave me behind,” Po said. “You’re risking Bitterblue’s safety otherwise.”

Katsa shot up to her feet, her fists angry and hard, suddenly beyond any pretense of calmness. “And I’m risking yours if I leave you. I’m not going to leave you on this mountain, to find your own food and build your own shelter and defend yourself when Leck comes along, when you… you can’t even walk, Po. What are you going to do, crawl away from his soldiers? Your head will feel better soon. You’l get your balance back and we’l move faster.”

He squinted up at her then and sighed. He looked into his hands. He turned his rings around on his fingers.

“I won’t get my balance back for some time, I think,” he said, and something strange in his voice stopped her.

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter, Katsa. Even if I woke up tomorrow completely healed, you’d have to leave me behind. We’ve only one horse. Unless you and Bitterblue ride the horse fast, you’l be overtaken.”

“I’ll not leave you behind.”

“Katsa. This isn’t about you or me. This is about Bitterblue.”

She sat down suddenly, the strength knocked out of her legs. For it was about Bitterblue. They’d come all this way for Bitterblue, and she was Bitterblue’s only hope. She swal owed. She made her face expressionless, for the child must not know how much it hurt her to rank Bitterblue’s safety above Po’s.

And then she knew suddenly that she was going to cry. She held her breath steady and didn’t look at him. “I’d thought to get a few hours of sleep,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Sleep for a bit, love.”

She wished that his voice was not so soft and kind. She wrapped herself in a blanket and lay beside the fire with her back to him. She commanded herself to sleep. A tear trickled over the bridge of her nose and down into her ear, but she commanded herself again.

She slept.

———

When she woke, Bitterblue slept on the ground beside her. Po sat on a rock before the crackling fire and looked into his hands. Katsa sat with him. The meat was cooked, and she ate it grateful y, for if she ate she did not have to talk, and if she talked she knew she would cry.

“We could get another horse,” she finally managed to say. She stared at the fire, and tried not to look at the lights that glowed in his face.

“Here, at the base of the mountains, Katsa?”

Al right then. There was no other horse.

“Even if we could,” he said, “it would be ages before I could ride fast enough. My head won’t heal while I’m rattling around on a horse. It’s best for me, too, Katsa, if you leave me behind. I’ll recover faster.”

“And how will you defend yourself? How will you eat?”

“I’ll hide. We’l find a place, early tomorrow, for me to hide. Come, Katsa, you know I hide better than anyone you’ve ever known, or heard of.”

She heard a smile in his voice. “Come, my wildcat. Come here.”

There was no helping her tears. For they would leave Po behind, to fend for himself and keep himself alive by hiding, though he couldn’t even walk unassisted. She knelt before him, and he took her into the crook of his uninjured arm. She cried into his shoulder like a child. Ashamed of herself, for it was only a parting, and Bitterblue had not wept like this even over a death. “Don’t be ashamed,” Po whispered. “Your sadness is dear to me. Don’t be frightened. I won’t die, Katsa. I won’t die, and we’l meet again.”

———

When bitterblue woke, Katsa was packing their belongings.