Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(112)
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.