“You can’t possibly have been thinking all those things, in that moment,” she said, and then he laughed, and the sound was a comfort to her, and she fought against the gold and silver lights that shone in his eyes, and lost. When he spoke, his voice was soft.
“And now I’m wondering,” he said, “how it is you don’t realize your eyes ensnare me, just as mine do you. I can’t explain it, Katsa, but you shouldn’t let it embarrass you. For we’re both overtaken by the same foolishness.”
A flush rose into her neck, and she was doubly embarrassed, by his eyes and by his words. But there was relief for her, too. Because if he was also foolish, then her foolishness bothered her less.
“I thought you might be doing it on purpose,” she said, “with your eyes. I thought it might be a part of your Grace, to trap me with your eyes and read my mind.”
“It’s not. It’s nothing like that.”
“Most people won’t look into my eyes,” she said. “Most people fear them.”
“Yes. Most people don’t look into my eyes for very long either. They’re too strange.”
She looked at his eyes then, leaned in and really studied them, as she hadn’t had the courage to do before. “Your eyes are like lights. They don’t seem quite natural.”
He grinned. “My mother says when I opened my eyes on the day they settled, she almost dropped me, she was so startled.”
“What color were they before?”
“Gray, like most Lienid. And yours?”
“I’ve no idea. No one’s ever told me, and I don’t think there’s anyone left I could ask.”
“Your eyes are beautiful,” he said, and she felt warm suddenly, warm in the sun that dappled through the treetops and rested on them in patches. And as they climbed back into their saddles and returned to the forest road, she didn’t feel exactly comfortable with him; but she felt at least that she could look him in the face now and not fear she was surrendering her entire soul.
———
The road led them around the outskirts of Murgon City and became wider and more traveled. Whenever Katsa and Po were seen, they were stared at. It would soon be known in the inns and houses around the city that the two fighters traveled south together along Murgon Road.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stop in on King Murgon,” Katsa said, “and ask him your questions? It would be much faster, wouldn’t it?”
“He made it quite clear after the robbery that I was no longer welcome at his court. He suspects I know what was stolen.”
“He’s afraid of you.”
“Yes, and he’s the type to do something foolish. If we arrived at his court he’d probably mount an offensive, and we’d have to start hurting people. I’d prefer to avoid that, wouldn’t you? If there’s going to be an enormous mess, let it be at the court of the guilty king, not the king who’s merely complicitous.”
“We’ll go to the inn.”
“Yes,” Po said. “We’ll go to the inn.”
The forest road narrowed again and grew quieter once they left Murgon City behind. They stopped before night fell.
They set up camp some distance from the road, in a small clearing with a mossy floor, a cover of thick branches, and a trickle of water that seemed to please the horses.
“This is all a man needs,” Po said. “I could live here, quite contented. What do you think, Katsa?”
“Are you hungry for meat? I’ll catch us something.”
“Even better,” he said. “But it’ll be dark in a few minutes. I wouldn’t want you to get lost, even in the pitch dark.”
Katsa smiled then and stepped across the stream. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. And I never get lost, even in the pitch dark.”
“You won’t even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?”
“I’ve a knife in my boot,” she said, and then wondered, for a moment, if she could throttle a moose with her bare hands. It seemed possible. But right now she only sought a rabbit or a bird, and her knife would serve as weapon. She slipped between the gnarled trees and into the damp silence of the forest. It was simply a matter of listening, remaining quiet, and making herself invisible.
When she came back minutes later with a great, fat, skinned rabbit, Po had built a fire. The flames cast orange light on the horses and on himself. “It was the least I could do,” Po said, drily, “and I see you’ve already skinned that hare.
I’m beginning to think I won’t have much responsibility as we travel through the forest together.”
“Does it bother you? You’re welcome to do the hunting yourself. Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks, and scream if I hear any strange noises.”
He smiled then. “Do you treat Giddon like this, when the two of you travel? I imagine he finds it quite humiliating.”
“Poor Po. You may content yourself with reading my mind, if you wish to feel superior.”
He laughed. “I know you’re teasing me. And you should know I’m not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we’re attacked, if you like. I’ll thank you for it.”
“But I’d never need to protect you, if we were attacked. And I doubt you need me to do your hunting, either.”
“True. But you’re better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn’t humiliate me.” He fed a branch to the fire. “It humbles me.
But it doesn’t humiliate me.”
She sat quietly as night closed in and watched the blood drip from the hunk of meat she held on a stick over the fire.
She listened to it sizzle as it hit the flames. She tried to separate in her mind the idea of being humbled from the idea of being humiliated, and she understood what Po meant. She wouldn’t have thought to make the distinction. He was so clear with his thoughts, while hers were a constant storm that she could never make sense of and never control. She felt suddenly and sharply that Po was smarter than she, worlds smarter, and that she was a brute in comparison. An unthinking and unfeeling brute.
“Katsa.”
She looked up. The flames danced in the silver and gold of his eyes and caught the hoops in his ears. His face was all light.
“Tell me,” he said. “Whose idea was the Council?”
“It was mine.”
“And who has decided what missions the Council carries out?”
“I have, ultimately.”
“Who has planned each mission?”
“I have, with Raffin and Oll and the others.”
He watched his meat cooking over the fire. He turned it, and shook it absently, so the juice fell spitting into the flames. He raised his eyes to her again.
“I don’t see how you can compare us,” he said, “and find yourself lacking in intelligence, or unthinking or unfeeling.
I’ve had to spend my entire life hammering out the emotions of others, and myself, in my mind. If my mind is clearer, sometimes, than yours, it’s because I’ve had more practice. That’s the only difference between us.”
He focused on his meat again. She watched him, listening.
“I wish you would remember the Council,” he said. “I wish you would remember that when we met, you were
rescuing my grandfather, for no other reason than that you didn’t believe he deserved to be kidnapped.”
He leaned into the fire then and added another branch to the flames. They sat quietly, huddled in the light, surrounded by darkness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the morning, she woke before he did. She followed the dribble of water downstream, until she found a place where it formed something larger than a puddle but smaller than a pool. There she bathed as well as she could. She shivered, but she didn’t mind the coldness of air and water; it woke her completely. When she tried to untie her hair and untangle it she met with the usual frustration. She yanked and tugged, but her fingers could not find a way through the knots. She tied it back up. She dried herself as best she could, and dressed. When she walked back into the clearing, he was awake, tying his bags together.
“Would you cut my hair off, if I asked you?”
He looked up, eyebrows raised. “You’re not thinking of trying to disguise yourself?”