Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(70)

The arrows made her angry. We could kill these men, all of them, she thought to Po. We should fight. But he kept yelling at her to run, and his hand tightened on her shoulder and pushed her forward, and she had that sense again that all was not right, that none of this was normal, and that in this madness, she should trust Po.

They raced around trees and clambered up slopes, rushing in whatever direction Po chose. The arrows dropped off as they moved deeper into the forest, for the woods slowed the horses and confused the men. Still they kept running. They came to a part of the forest so thickly wooded that the snow had caught in the branches of the trees and never reached the ground. Our footprints, Katsa thought. He’s taken us here so they can’t trace our footprints. She clung to that thought, because it was the only piece of this senselessness she understood.

Finally, Po pulled her hands from her ears. They ran more, until they came to a great, wide tree with brown needles, the ground littered with dead branches that had fallen from its trunk. “There’s a hollow place, up high,” Po said.

“There’s an opening in the trunk. Can you climb it? If I go first, can you follow?”

“Of course. Here,” she said, making a cup with her hands. He put one foot into her palms and jumped, and she lifted him up as high as she could into the tree. She made handholds and footholds of the rough places in the trunk and hustled up after him. “Avoid that branch,” he called down to her. “And this one: A breeze would knock it down.” She used the limbs he used; he climbed and she followed. He disappeared, and a moment later his arms reached out of a great hole above her. He pulled her inside the tree, into the hollowed-out space he’d sensed from the ground. They sat in the dark, breathing heavily, their legs entwined in their tree cave.

“We’ll be safe here, for now,” Po said. “As long as they don’t come after us with dogs.”

But why were they hiding? Now that they sat still, the strangeness of all that had happened began to pierce Katsa’s mind, like the arrows the horsemen had shot at their backs. Why were they hiding, why weren’t they fighting? Why were they afraid? That woman had been afraid, too. That woman who looked like a Lienid. Ashen. The wife of Leck was a Lienid, and her name was Ashen – and yes, that made sense, because that grief-stricken man had called her his wife. That man with the eyepatch and the bow in his hands was Leck.

But wasn’t it Leck’s arrow that had struck Ashen? Katsa couldn’t quite recall; and when she tried to watch that moment again in her mind, a fog and falling snow blocked her sight.

Po might remember. But Po had been so strange, too, telling her to shoot Leck as he grieved over his wife. And then telling her to cover her ears. Why cover her ears?

That thing that she couldn’t quite grasp flickered again in her mind. She reached for it and it disappeared. And then she was angry, at her thick-headedness, her stupidity. She couldn’t make sense of all this, because she was too unintelligent.

She looked at Po, who leaned against the wall of the tree and stared straight ahead at nothing. The sight of him upset her even more, for his face seemed thin, his mouth tight. He was tired, worn out, most likely hungry. He’d said something about dogs, and she knew his eyes well enough to recognize the shadows of worry that sat within them.

Po. Please tell me what’s wrong.

“Katsa.” He sighed her name. He rubbed his forehead and then looked into her face. “Do you remember our

conversations about King Leck, Katsa? What we said about him, before we saw him today?”

She stared at him and remembered they’d said something; but she couldn’t remember what it was.

“About his eyes, Katsa. Something he’s hiding.”

“He’s…” It came to her suddenly. “He’s Graced.”

“Yes. Do you remember what his Grace is?”

And then it began to trickle back to her, piece by piece, from some part of her mind she hadn’t been able to reach before. She saw it again clearly. Ashen, terrified, fleeing from her husband and his army; Leck shooting Ashen in the back; Leck crying out in pretended grief, his words fogging Katsa’s mind, transforming the murder her eyes had seen into a tragic accident she couldn’t remember. Po screaming at her to shoot Leck; and she refusing.

She couldn’t look him in the face, for shame overwhelmed her.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“I swore to you I’d do what you said. I swore it, Po.”

“Katsa. No one could’ve kept that promise. If I’d known how powerful Leck was, if I’d had the slightest idea – I never should have brought you here.”

“You didn’t bring me here. We came together.”

“Well, and now we’re both in great danger.” He stiffened. “Wait,” he whispered. He seemed to be listening to something, but Katsa could hear nothing. “They’re searching the forest,” he said after a minute. “That one turned away.

I don’t think they have dogs.”

“But why are we hiding from them?”

“Katsa – ”

“What do you mean, we’re in great danger? Why aren’t we fighting these butchers, why…” She dropped her face into her hands. “I’m so confused. I’m hopelessly stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. It’s Leck’s Grace that takes away your own thought, and it’s my Grace that sees so much more than a person should. You’re confused because Leck confused you deliberately with his words, and because I haven’t told you yet what I know.”