Graceling: Chapters 22–30

They left before sunlight broke over the peaks, with provisions wrapped by the innkeeper's wife, and cold water from the inn’s well.

In some places huts had been built for the use of travelers, empty of furniture but with crude, functional fireplaces.

They climbed, and Katsa wondered what that would be like—whether they would pose as friends to the court and infiltrate it gradually, or whether they would enter on the offensive and instigate an enormous fight.

She pictured Leck as a smirking, insincere man standing at the end of a velvet carpet, his single eye narrowed and clever.

The downhill scramble was more treacherous than the uphill climb.

Po complained that his toes were liable to burst through the front of his boots; and then he complained that he wished they would, for they ached from the constant downhill beat of his feet.

“The world is filling in around me,” he said, “piece by piece. The fuzziness is clearing. To be honest, it’s a bit disorienting. I’m ever so slightly dizzy.”

They raced around trees and clambered up slopes, rushing in whatever direction Po chose.

“Let’s hope she inherited some of her father’s cunning.”

They waited, it seemed interminably.

They tucked the child behind rocks and weeds, inside a niche at the base of a tree.

When Katsa returned to camp with a stringful of quail, plucked and gutted, the sun was sinking behind the mountains.

Her whole life she’d believed Leck’s reputation for beneficence. Did he convince his victims, too, that he was doing them a kindness, even while he cut them with his knives?

Surely he would materialize in the next few minutes; but just in case he did not, she woke Bitterblue.

“I need your help,” Katsa said, and for a good while Bitterblue was Katsa’s assistant, tearing open bags to find clothing that could be used to dry him or stanch his bleeding, rifling through the medicines for the ointment that cleaned wounds, soaking bloody cloths in the lake.

“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.”

And in her mind, over and over, she warned Po, implored Po, to stop announcing aloud every little thing his Grace revealed to him.

A person with an aching head shouldn’t be riding an animal whose every step reverberated like an axe to his skull; but walking was out of the question.

For they would leave Po behind, to fend for himself and keep himself alive by hiding, though he couldn’t even walk unassisted.

The child’s teeth chattered as she knelt beside Katsa. She had no coat, and the blanket she wore as they traveled was threadbare.

She felt around and found the rock whose underside she’d struck. It jutted above the surface and felt flat and mossy on top.

She beheaded the fish and cut them open. She threw the entrails back into the pond.

Think about disguising yourself. You’re dirty and bedraggled, but any fool would recognize either of you.

He stood again, gingerly, and leaned back against the door frame.

And within a day or two, Katsa and Bitterblue would be sharing the base of the Monsean peaks with hordes of Leck’s soldiers.

A feminine boy with one very bright blue eye, an eyepatch, and a Lienidish child charge would attract more attention in daylight than they could possibly weather.

They would be apprehended, and she would have to kill people.

She would have to commandeer a boat, or steal one, she who didn’t know the first thing about boats.

They had the dagger and the knife; a length of rope; a needle and some cord; the maps; a fraction of the medicines; most of the gold; a small amount of extra clothing; the ratty blanket Bitterblue wore; two saddlebags; one saddle; and one bridle.

And they had anything that Katsa could capture, kill, or construct with her own two hands as they climbed. This, first and foremost, should include the fur of some beast, to protect the child from the nagging cold they encountered here and the dangerous cold that awaited them—and that Katsa wouldn’t dwell on, because when she dwelled she began to doubt herself.

There was something petulant in the child’s tone, the first hint of complaint from the girl since Katsa and Po had found her in the forest.

Beside their fire every night, she stretched and dried the pelts of their dinners. She rubbed fish oils and fat into the hides. She pieced together the pelts, experimenting with them and persisting until she’d made the child a rough fur hood, with ends that wrapped around her neck like a scarf.

She curbed her impatience as best she could, and focused her energies on providing for the child.

That night their camp was crowded, but the fire warmed their small space, and cooked their cat steaks, and dried the tawny pelt that would soon become Bitterblue’s coat.

And every night, with the fire stoked and her work done, and thoughts of Po so close she couldn’t escape them, she curled up against Bitterblue and gave herself a few hours’ sleep.

A warning began to buzz, and then clamor, in Katsa’s mind.

She untangled the halter she’d constructed, and helped the child into it, one weary leg at a time. Bitterblue didn’t protest or ask for an explanation. She moved sluggishly.

She adjusted quickly to the snowshoes and to the precariously balanced loads on her back and her front.

Every breath of this air was a blade gouging into her lungs.

She ran, and at first she thought the pounding of her feet and legs created some warmth; and then the incessant thud, thud, thud became a biting ache, and then a dull one; and finally, she could no longer feel the pounding at all, but forced it to continue, forward, upward, closer to the peaks that always seemed the same distance away.