Katsa pulled herself onto a jumble of stones and stopped to look around. They seemed no closer to the tops of the peaks that rose before them. It was only by looking back, to the forest far below, that she knew they’d climbed; that, and the drop in temperature. She shifted her bags and stepped back onto the trail.
And then the thought of queens protecting children from kings registered more deeply in her mind.
Po. Leck has a daughter.
“Yes, Bitterblue. She’s ten.”
Bitterblue could have a role in this strange affair. IfLeck was trying to hurt her, it would explain Queen Ashen hiding away with her.
Po stopped in his tracks and turned to look at her anxiously. “If he cuts up animals for pleasure, I hate to think what he would want with his own daughter.”
The question hung in the air between them, eerie and horrible. Katsa thought suddenly of the two dead little girls.
“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Po said, his hand to his stomach as if he felt ill.
“Let’s move faster,” Katsa said, “just in case I’m right.”
They set off almost at a run. They followed the path upward, through the mountains that separated them from Monsea and whatever truth it contained.
———
They woke the next morning on the floor of a dusty hut to a dead fire and a winter cold that seeped through the crack under the door. The frozen stars melted as Katsa and Po climbed, and light spread across the horizon. The path grew steeper and more rocky. The pace of their climb pushed away the chill and the stiffness that Katsa didn’t feel but that Po complained of.
“I’ve been thinking about how we should approach Leck’s court,” Po said. He climbed from one rock to another and jumped to a third.
“What were you thinking?”
“Well, I’d like to be more certain of our suspicions before meeting him.”
“Should we find an inn outside the court, and stay there our first night?”
“That’s my thought.”
“But we shouldn’t waste any time.”
“No. If we can’t learn anything helpful in one night, then perhaps we should go ahead and present ourselves to the court.” They climbed, and Katsa wondered what that would be like – whether they would pose as friends to the court and infiltrate it gradually, or whether they would enter on the offensive and instigate an enormous fight. She pictured Leck as a smirking, insincere man standing at the end of a velvet carpet, his single eye narrowed and clever. She imagined herself shooting an arrow into his heart, so that he crumpled to his knees, bled all over his carpet, and died at the feet of his stewards. At Po’s command, her strike. It would have to be at Po’s command, for until they knew the truth of his Grace, she couldn’t trust her own judgment. Po? That’s true, isn’t it?
He took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I’ve some ideas about that as well,” he said. “Once we’re in Monsea, would you consent to do what I say, and only what I say? Just until I have a sense of Leck’s power? Would you ever consent to that?”
“Of course I would, Po, in this case.”
“And you must expect me to behave strangely. I’ll have to pretend I’m Graced with fighting, no more, and that I believe every word he says.”
“And I’ll practice my archery, and my knife throwing,” Katsa said. “For I’ve a feeling that when all is asked and revealed, King Leck will find himself on the end of my blade.”
Po shook his head and did not smile. “I’ve a feeling it’s not going to be that easy.”
———
The third day of their crossing was the windiest, and the coldest. The mountain pass led them between two peaks that were hidden, sometimes, behind cyclones of snow. Their boots crunched through patches of snow; and flakes drifted onto their shoulders from the thin blue sky and melted into Katsa’s hair.
“I like winter in the mountains,” she said, but Po laughed.
“This isn’t winter in the mountains. This is autumn in the mountains, and a mild autumn at that. Winter is ferocious.”
“I think I should like that, too,” she said, and Po laughed again.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. You’d thrive on the challenge of it.”
The weather held, so that Katsa’s declaration could not be put to the test. They moved as fast as the terrain would permit. For all his marveling at Katsa’s energy, Po was strong and quick. He teased her for the pace she set, but he didn’t complain; and if he stopped sometimes for food and water, Katsa was grateful, for it reminded her to eat and drink as well. And it gave her an excuse to turn around and stare behind them, at the mountains that stretched from east to west, at the whole world she could see – for she was so high that she felt she could see the whole world.
And then suddenly, they reached the top of the pass. Before them the mountains plunged into a forest of pines.
Green valleys stretched beyond, broken by streams and farmhouses and tiny dots that Katsa guessed were cows. And a line, a river, that thinned into the distance and led to a miniature white city at the edge of their sight. Leck City.
“I can barely see it,” Po said, “but I trust your vision.”
“I see buildings,” Katsa said, “and a dark wall around a white castle. And look, see the farmhouses in the valley?
Surely you can make those out. And the cows, do you see the cows?”
“Yes, I can see them, now that you mention it. It’s gorgeous, Katsa. Have you ever seen a sight so gorgeous?”
She laughed at his happiness. For a moment, as they looked down on Monsea, the world was beautiful and without worry.
———
The downhill scramble was more treacherous than the uphill climb. Po complained that his toes were liable to burst through the front of his boots; and then he complained that he wished they would, for they ached from the constant downhill beat of his feet. And then Katsa noticed that he stopped complaining altogether and sank into a preoccupation.
“Po. We’re moving fast.”
“Yes.” He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted down at the fields of Monsea. “I only hope it’s fast enough.”
They camped that night beside a stream that ran with melting snow. She sat on a rock and watched his eyes that glimmered with worry. He glanced at her and smiled suddenly. “Would you like something sweet to eat with this rabbit?”
“Of course,” she said, “but it makes little difference what I want, if all we have is rabbit.”
He stood then and turned away into the scrub.
Where are you going?
He didn’t answer. His boots scraped on rock as he disappeared into blackness.
She stood. “Po!”
“Don’t worry your heart, Katsa.” His voice came from a distance. “I’m only finding what you want.”
“If you think I’m just going to sit here – ”
“Sit down. You’ll ruin my surprise.”
She sat, but she let him know what she thought of him and his surprise, rattling around in the dark and breaking his ankles on the rocks most likely, so she’d have to carry him the rest of the way down the mountain. A few minutes passed, and she heard him returning. He stepped into the light and came to her, his hand cupped before him. When he knelt before her, she saw a little mound of berries in his palm. She looked into the shadows of his face.
“Winterberries?” she asked.
“Winterberries.”
She took one from his hand and bit into it. It popped with a cold sweetness. She swallowed the soft flesh and watched his face, confused. “Your Grace showed them to you, these winterberries.”
“‘Yes.”
“Po. This is new, isn’t it? That you should sense a plant with such clarity. It’s not as if it were moving or thinking or about to crash down on top of you.”
He sat back on his heels. He tilted his head. “The world is filling in around me,” he said, “piece by piece. The fuzziness is clearing. To be honest, it’s a bit disorienting. I’m ever so slightly dizzy.”
Katsa stared at him. There was nothing to say in response to this; his Grace was showing him winterberries, and he was ever so slightly dizzy. Tomorrow he would be able to tell her about a landslide on the other side of the world, and they would both faint.
She sighed and touched the gold in his ear. “If you put your feet into the stream, the snow water will soothe your toes, and I’ll rub the warmth back into them when you’re done.”