Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(115)

But on the heels of that storm came another, and after that storm another, as if winter had torn up the schedule and decided it wasn’t going to end after all. Bitterblue sent two guards with a letter for Ror. Ror wrote back from Bitterblue’s court that the weather was just as well; the more time Bitterblue gave him to sort out the stories Leck had left behind, the smoother and the safer her transition to the throne would be. He would plan the coronation for true spring, and she could wait out the storms for as long as she wished.

Katsa knew the cabin’s close quarters were trying to Po, burdened as he was with his unhappy secret. But if everyone was staying, then at least he didn’t have to justify quite yet his own intention not to leave. He kept his discomfort to himself and helped the guards lead the horses to a nearby rock shelter he claimed to have found during his recovery.

His story came out slowly, whenever he and Katsa were able to contrive ways to be alone.

The day of Katsa and Bitterblue’s departure had not been easy for Po. He’d still had his sight, but it hadn’t felt quite right to him; it had changed in some way his head was too muddled to quantify, some way that gave him a deep sense of misgiving.

“You didn’t tell me,” Katsa said. “You let me leave you like that.”

“If I’d told you, you never would have gone. You had to go.”

Po had stumbled his way to the cabin’s bed. He’d spent most of that day lying on his unhurt side with his eyes closed, waiting for Leck’s soldiers and for his dizziness to pass. He’d tried to convince himself that when his head cleared, his sight would, too. But waking the next morning, he’d opened his eyes to blackness.

“I was angry,” he told her. “And unsteady on my feet. And I was out of food, which meant that I had to find my way to the fish trap. I couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t eat, that day or the next.”

What had driven him finally to the pool was not his hunger. It was Leck’s soldiers. He’d sensed them climbing the rocks toward the cabin. “I was up and stumbling,” he told her, “before I even realized what I was doing. I was barreling around the cabin collecting my things; and then I was outside, finding a crack in a rock to hide them. I wasn’t at my most lucid. I’m sure I must have fallen down, over and over. But I knew where the pool was, and I got myself to it. The water was awful, so cold, but it woke me, and it was less dizzying, somehow, to be swimming, rather than walking. I made it to the cave somehow, and somehow I pulled myself onto the rocks. And then, in the cave, with the soldiers shouting outside and my body so cold I thought I would bite off my own tongue with my chattering teeth – I found it, Katsa.”

He stopped talking, and he was quiet for so long that she wondered if he’d forgotten what he’d been saying.

“What did you find?”

He turned his head to her, surprised. “Clarity,” he said. “My thoughts cleared. There was no light in the cave; there was nothing to see. And yet I sensed the cave with my Grace, so vividly. And I realized what I was doing. Sitting in the cabin, feeling sorry for myself, when Leck was out there somewhere and people were in danger. In the cave it struck me how despicable that was.”

The thought of Leck had brought Po back into the water, out of the cave and to the fish trap. Back to the cabin to fumble, numb from cold, with the lighting of the fire. The next few days were grim. “I was weak and dizzy and sick. I walked, at first, never farther than the fish trap. Then with Leck in my mind I pushed a bit farther. My balance was passable, if I was sitting still. I made the bow. With Leck in my mind, I began to practice shooting it.”

His head dropped. Silence settled over him. And Katsa thought she understood the rest. Po had held the notion of Leck close to himself; Leck had given him a reason to reach for his strength. He’d driven himself toward health and balance. And then they’d returned to him with the happy news that Leck was dead. Po was left without a reason.

Unhappiness had choked him once again.

The very fact of his unhappiness made him unhappy.

“I’ve no right to feel sorry for myself,” he said to her one day, when they’d gone out into a quiet snowfall to fetch water. “I see everything. I see things I shouldn’t see. I’m wallowing in self-pity, when I’ve lost nothing.”

Katsa crouched with him before the pool. “That’s the first truly idiotic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

His mouth tightened. He picked up one of the rocks they used to bash through the ice. He lifted the rock above his head and drove it, hard, into the frozen surface of the pool; and finally she was rewarded with a low rumble of something that almost passed for a laugh. “Your brand of comfort bears some similarity to your tactical offense.”

“You’ve lost something,” she said, “and you’ve every right to feel sorrow for what you’ve lost. They’re not the same, sight and your Grace. Your Grace shows you the form of things, but it doesn’t show you beauty. You’ve lost beauty.”

His mouth tightened again, and he looked away from her. When he looked back she thought he might be about to cry But he spoke tearlessly, stonily. “I won’t go back to Lienid. I won’t go to my castle, if I’m not able to see it. It’s hard enough to be with you. It’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. I wanted you to go away, because it hurts to be with you when I can’t see you.”