Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(80)

Several hours before dawn she began to think of the fish she had caught earlier, the fish scaled and gutted, and wrapped and bound with the bags to the horse. Once light came they wouldn’t be able to risk even the smallest fire.

They’d eaten very little that day, and they had very little food for the next. If they stopped now for just a few minutes, she could cook the fish. She wouldn’t have to think of food again, until the next nightfall.

But even this was risky, for the light of a fire could attract attention in this darkness.

Po whispered her name then, and she stopped the horse and walked back to him.

“There’s a cave,” he whispered, “a few steps to the southeast.” His hand swayed in the air and then rested on her shoulder. “Stay here beside me. I’ll lead us there.”

He directed her footsteps over stones and around boulders. If she’d been less tired, Katsa would have taken a moment to appreciate the clarity with which his Grace showed him the landscape. But now they were at the entrance to Po’s cave, and there was too much else to consume her mind. She must wake Bitterblue, untie her, and help her down.

She must get Po from the horse and onto the ground. She must find wood to build a fire, then get the fish cooking. She must dress Po’s shoulder again, because it still bled freely no matter how tightly she bound it.

“Sleep while the fish cooks,” he said, as she wound clean strips of cloth around his arm and chest to stanch the flow of blood. “Katsa. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you if we need you.”

“You’re the one who needs sleep,” she said.

He caught her arm then as she knelt before him. “Katsa. Sleep for a quarter of an hour. No one is near. You won’t get another chance to sleep tonight.”

She sat on her heels and looked at him. Shirtless, colorless, squinting from pain. Bruises darkening his face. He dropped her arm and sighed. “I’m dizzy,” he said. “I’m sure I look like death, Katsa, but I’m not going to bleed to death and I’m not going to die of dizziness. Sleep, for a few minutes.”

Bitterblue came forward. “He’s right,” she said. “You should sleep. I’ll take care of him.” She picked up his coat and helped him into it, moving his bandaged shoulder gently, carefully. Surely, Katsa thought, they could manage without her, for a few minutes. Surely they would all do better if she got some small sleep.

So she lay down before the fire and instructed herself to sleep for only a quarter of an hour. When she woke, Po and Bitterblue had barely moved. She felt better.

They ate quietly and fast. Po leaned back against the cave wall, eyes closed. He claimed to have little appetite, but Katsa had no sympathy. She sat before him and fed him pieces of fish until she was satisfied that he’d eaten enough.

Katsa was suffocating the fire with her boots, and Bitterblue was binding together the remaining fish, when he spoke.

“It’s good you weren’t there, Katsa,” he said. “For today I listened to Leck prattle on for hours about his love for his kidnapped daughter. About how his heart would be broken until he found her.”

Katsa went to sit before him. Bitterblue shuffled closer so that she could hear his whispered words.

“I got through the outer guard easily,” Po said. “I came within sight of him, finally, in the early afternoon. His inner guard surrounded him so closely that I couldn’t get a shot at him. I waited forever. I followed them. They never once heard me; but they never once moved away from the king.”

“He was expecting you,” Katsa said. “They were there for you.”

He nodded, then winced.

“Tell us later, Po,” Katsa said. “Rest for now.”

“It’s a short story,” he said. “I finally decided my only option was to take out one of his guards. So I shot one. But the instant he fell, of course, the king jumped for cover. I shot again, and my arrow grazed Leck’s neck, but only barely. It was a job meant for you, Katsa. You’d have hit him squarely. I couldn’t do it.”

“Well,” Katsa said. I would never have found him in the first place. And even if I had, I would never have killed him.

You know that. It was a job meant for neither of us.

“After that, of course, his inner guard was after me,” Po said, “and then his outer guard, and his soldiers, too, once they’d heard the alarm. It – it was a bloodbath. I must have killed a dozen men. It was all I could do to get away, and then I rode north, to throw them off the track.” He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, then opened them again.

He squinted at Katsa. “Leck has a bowman who’s nearly as good as you, Katsa. You saw what he did to the horse.”

And he would have done the same to you, she thought to him. If it weren’t for your newfound ability to sense arrows as they fly toward you.

He smiled, ever so slightly. Then he squinted at Bitterblue.

“You’ve begun to trust me,” he said.

“You tried to kill the king,” Bitterblue said, simply.

“All right,” Katsa said, “enough talking.”

She returned to the fire, and smothered it. They pushed Po up into the saddle again, and again she tied her charges to the horse. And in her mind, over and over, she warned Po, implored Po, to stop announcing aloud every little thing his Grace revealed to him.