Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(114)

When he’d come back to the cabin after their conversation, with his bow in one hand and an armload of rabbits in the other, he’d unloaded his quarry contentedly on his brother and shrugged himself out of his coat. Then he’d come to her, where she sat brooding against the wall. He’d crouched before her, taken her hands in his and kissed them, and rubbed his cold face against them. “I’m sorry,” he’d said; and she’d felt suddenly that everything was normal, and Po was himself, and they’d start again, fresh and new. Then over dinner, as the others bantered and Bitterblue teased her guards, Katsa watched Po withdraw. He ate little. He sank into silence, unhappiness in the lines of his face. And her heart ached so much to look at him that she walked out of the cabin and stumped around for ages alone in the dark.

At moments he seemed happy. But something was clearly wrong. If he would just… if he would only just look at her. If he would only look into her face.

And of course, if alone was what he needed, alone was what she would give. But – and she thought this might be unfair, but still she decided it – she was going to require proof. He was going to have to convince her, convince her utterly, that solitude was his need. Only then would she leave him to his strange anguish.

———

In the morning Po seemed cheerful enough; but Katsa, who was beginning to feel like a henpecking mother, registered his lack of interest in the food, even the Lienid food, spread across the table. He ate practically nothing, and then made some vague, unlikely remark about checking on the lame horse. He wandered outside.

“What’s wrong with him?” Bitterblue asked.

Katsa’s eyes slid to the child’s face, and held her steady gray gaze. There was no point pretending she didn’t know what Bitterblue meant. Bitterblue had never been stupid.

“I don’t know,” Katsa said. “He won’t tell me.”

“Sometimes he seems himself,” Skye said, “and other times he sinks into a mood.” He cleared his throat. “But I thought it might be a lovers’ quarrel.”

Katsa looked at him levelly. She ate a piece of bread. “It’s possible, but I don’t think so.”





Skye raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Seems to me you’d know if it were.”

“If only things were that simple,” Katsa said, drily. “There’s something strange about his eyes,” Bitterblue said.

“Yes,” Katsa said, “well, it’s likely he has the strangest eyes in all seven kingdoms. But I’d have expected you to notice that before now.”

“No,” Bitterblue said. “I mean there’s something di fferent about his eyes.”

Something different about his eyes.

Yes, there was a difference. The difference was that he wouldn’t look at her, or at any of them. Almost as if it pained his heart to raise his eyes and focus on another person. Almost as if –

An image flashed into her mind then, out of nowhere. Po falling through the light, a horse’s enormous body falling above him. Po, slamming into the water face-first, the horse crashing in after him.

And more images. Po, sick and gray before the fire, the skin of his face bruised black. Po squinting at her and rubbing his eyes.

Katsa choked on her bread. She shot to her feet and knocked over her chair.

Skye thumped her back. “Great seas, Katsa. Are you all right?”

Katsa coughed, and gasped something about checking on the lame horse. She ran out of the cabin.

———

Po wasn’t with the horses, but when Katsa asked after him, one of the guards pointed in the direction of the pool.

Katsa ran behind the cabin and over the hill.

He was standing, his back to her, staring into the frozen pond. His shoulders slumped and his hands in his pockets.

“I know you’re invincible, Katsa,” he said without turning around. “But even you should put on a coat when you come outside.”

“Po,” she said. “Turn around and look at me.”

He dropped his head. His shoulders rose and fell with one deep breath. He didn’t turn around.

“Po,” she said. “Look at me.”

He turned then, slowly. He looked into her face. His eyes seemed to focus on hers, for just an instant; and then his eyes dropped. They emptied. She saw it happen; she saw his eyes empty.

She whispered. “Po. Are you blind?”

At that, something in him seemed to break. He fell to his knees. A tear made an icy track down his face. When Katsa went to him and dropped down before him, he let her come; the fight had gone out of him and he let her in. Katsa’s arms came around him. He pulled Katsa against him, practically smothered her with his grip, and cried into her neck.

She held him, simply held him, and touched him, and kissed his cold face.

“Oh, Katsa,” he cried. “Katsa.”

They knelt like that for a very long time.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT




That morning a squall kicked up. By afternoon the squall had turned into a gentle but soggy storm. “I can’t bear the thought of more winter-weather travel,” Bitterblue said, half asleep before the fire. “Now that we’re here with Po, can’t we stay here, Katsa, until it stops snowing?”