Po’s mother drew a shaky breath. She turned to her husband. “It seems possible to me that what Lady Katsa has done wasn’t entirely unwarranted,” she said. “He was clearly about to make some absurd accusation regarding our Po. I, for one, am willing to consider the possibility that he’s been lying all along.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “We should sit down and try to sort this out.”
Her husband and her sons scratched their heads, nodded their heads vaguely. “Let’s all sit,” Ror said, waving his arms to the chairs. He glanced at Leck’s body and started, as if he’d forgotten it sat there, slumped and bleeding. “Bring the chairs here, to the middle of the room, away from that – spectacle. Sons, help the ladies. There, there, they are crying. Princess – Queen – Bitterblue, will you repeat again the things you’ve just said? I confess my head is muddled.
Sons, keep your swords drawn – there’s no point in being careless.”
“I’ll disarm her,” Bitterblue said, “if it will make you more comfortable. Please, Katsa,” she said apologetically, holding out her hand.
Katsa reached into her boot and handed the child her knife, numbly. She sat in the chair that was brought to her and numbly registered the bustle of people forming a circle, the clanking of swords, the women wiping their faces and gasping, clinging to their husbands’ arms. She dropped her head into her hands. For her mind was returning, and she understood now what she had done.
———
It was like a spell that fizzled away slowly, popping one bubble at a time, and leaving their minds empty. Truly empty; they spoke stupidly, slowly, straining to reconstruct a conversation they couldn’t remember, even though every one of them had been present for it.
Ror couldn’t even give straight answers to Bitterblue’s questions, about when Leck had arrived in Lienid, what he’d said; what he’d done to convince them that Po’s castle was his. To convince Ror to leave his city and his court and come to a remote corner of his kingdom, with his wife and his sons, and amuse Leck and subjugate himself to Leck, while Leck waited for a daughter who might never arrive. What things Leck had said during that waiting time came slowly, incredulously from Ror’s lips. “I believe… I believe he told me that he would like to establish himself in my city.
Beside my throne!”
“I believe he said something about my serving girls, something I won’t repeat,” Ror’s queen said.
“He spoke of altering our trade agreements! I’m sure of it!” Ror exclaimed. “In favor of Monsea!”
Ror stood and began to stride around the room. Katsa rose woodenly, in respect for a rising king, but the queen pulled her back down. “If we stood every time he marched around we’d always be standing,” she said. Her hand rested on Katsa’s arm a bit longer than was necessary, and her gaze on Katsa’s face. Her voice was gentle. The further the assembly moved toward unraveling Leck’s manipulations, the more kindly the Queen of Lienid seemed to look upon the lady at her side.
Ror’s fury escalated, and the fury of his sons, each shaking off his stupor and rising one by one. Shouting their outrage, arguing with each other about what had been said. “Is Po really all right?” one of them asked Katsa, one of the younger ones who paused before her chair and looked into her face. A tear dropped onto her cheek, and she left it to Bitterblue to tell their story, to tell truths about Leck that struck the assembly like arrows. That Leck had desired to hurt the child in some eerie, horrible way; that Leck had kidnapped Grandfather Tealiff; that Leck had murdered Ashen.
That his men had nearly murdered Po. And now Ror’s grief matched his fury, and he knelt on the floor sobbing, for his father and his son and especially his sister; and his sons’ shouts grew even louder and more incredulous. Katsa thought dumbly that it was no wonder Po was so voluble. In Lienid everyone was, and everyone spoke at once. She wiped the tears from her face and fought against her own confusion.
When the young brother crouched before Katsa again and offered her his handkerchief, she took it and stared stupidly into his face. “Do you think Po’s all right?” he asked. “Will you go back for him now? I’d like to go with you.”
She wiped her face with the handkerchief. “Which one are you?”
The brother smiled. “I’m Skye. I’ve never seen anyone throw a dagger so fast. You’re exactly as I imagined you.”
He rose to his feet again and went to his father. Katsa held her stomach and tried to calm the sourness surging inside her. The fog of Leck’s Grace was slower to leave her than to leave the others, and she was sick with what she’d done.
Yes, Leck was dead, and that was a good thing. But it was because she’d used a dagger – a dagger – to stop someone talking. It was as violent as anything she’d ever done for Randa. And she hadn’t even known what she was doing.
———
She must go to Po. She must leave them all to piece the truth together by themselves. It didn’t matter, these details they picked apart and discussed and argued over, on and on, as the day turned to night. Bitterblue was saved, and that mattered; Po was alone and hurt, and struggling through a Monsean winter, and that mattered.
“Will you tell them about the ring?” Bitterblue asked her that night as Katsa sat in their bedroom forcing her sluggish mind to take stock of their supply situation.
“No,” she said. “There’s no need. It’ll only worry them. The first thing I’ll do when I reach Po is give it back to him.”
“Will we leave very early?”
Katsa’s eyes snapped to the child who stood before her, her face serious, one hand resting on the knife at her belt.
The Queen of Monsea, in trousers and short hair, looking for all the world like a miniature pirate.
“You needn’t come,” Katsa said. “It’ll be a difficult journey. Once we reach Monport we’ll be traveling very fast, and I won’t lessen my pace for your comfort.”
“Of course I’m coming.”
“You’re the Queen of Monsea now. You can commission a great ship and travel in luxury. You can wait until the season turns.”
“And fret, here in Lienid, until you send word that Po’s all right? Of course I’ll come with you.”
Katsa looked into her lap and swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t like to admit how it comforted her, to know Bitterblue would be with her for this. “We leave at first light,” she said, “on a boat Ror’s furnished from the village nearby. We go first to collect Captain Faun and resupply her ship. Then she’ll take us to Monport.”
Bitterblue nodded. “Then I’m going to take a bath and go to sleep. Where do you suppose I must go to find someone who’ll bring hot water?”
Katsa smiled, mildly. “Ring the bell, Lady Queen. Po’s servants are a bit overtaxed at the moment, I do believe; but for the ruler of Monsea, someone will come.”
It was, in fact, Po’s mother who came. She appraised the situation and produced a servant girl who swept Bitterblue off to another room, murmuring reassurances about the temperature of the water and curtsying as best she could with her arms full of towels.
Po’s mother stayed behind and sat beside Katsa on the bed. She clasped her hands in her lap. The rings on her
fingers caught the light from the fireplace and drew Katsa’s eyes.
“Po told me you wear nineteen rings,” she heard herself saying, senselessly. She took a breath. She gripped her forehead and tried, for the hundredth time, to drive from her mind the image of Leck nailed to his chair by her dagger.
The queen opened her hands and considered her rings. She closed them again, and looked sideways at Katsa. “The others think you remembered the truth, suddenly, about Leck,” she said. “They think you remembered it suddenly and silenced him right away, before his lies caused you to forget again. And perhaps that is what happened. But I believe I understand why you found the strength to act at that moment.”
Katsa looked back at the woman, at her calm face and quiet, intelligent eyes. She answered the question she saw in those eyes. “Po has told me the truth of his Grace.”
“He must love you very much,” the queen said, so simply that Katsa started. Katsa ducked her head.