Their route at least provided some distraction for Po. He couldn’t stop looking around, his eyes wide. “It’s wild, this forest. Have you ever seen anything like this? It’s gorgeous.”

Gorgeous, and full of animals fattening themselves for winter. Easy hunting, and easy finding shelter. But Katsa felt palpably that the horses were moving as slowly as her mind.

“I think we would move faster on our feet,” she said.

“You’ll miss the horses when we have to give them up.”

“And when will that be?”

“It looks possibly ten days away on the map.”

“I’ll prefer traveling by foot.”

“You never tire,” Po said, “do you?”

“I do, if I haven’t slept for a long time. Or if I’m carrying something very heavy. I felt tired when I carried your grandfather up a flight of stairs.”

He glanced at her, eyebrows high. “You carried my grandfather up a flight of stairs?”

“Yes, at Randa’s castle.”

“After a day and a night of hard riding?”

“Yes.”

His laugh burst out, but she didn’t see the joke. “I had to do it, Po. If I hadn’t, the mission would’ve failed.”

“He weighs as much as you, and half as much again.”

“Well, and I was tired by the time I got to the top. You wouldn’t have been so tired.”

“I’m bigger than he is, Katsa. I’m stronger. And I would have been tired, had I spent the night on my horse.”

“I had to do it. I had no choice.”

“Your Grace is more than fighting,” he said.

She didn’t respond to that, and after a moment’s puzzlement, she forgot it. Her mind returned to the matter at hand. As it couldn’t help but do, with Po always before her.

WHAT WAS the difference between a husband and a lover?

If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn’t yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would not be her own; it would be Po’s to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.

If Po were her lover, would she feel captured, cornered into a sense of forever? Or would she still have the freedom that sprang from herself?

They were lying on opposite sides of a dying fire one night when a new worry occurred to her. What if she took more from Po than she could give to him?

“Po?”

She heard him turn onto his side. “Yes?”

“How will you feel if I’m forever leaving? If one day I give myself to you and the next I take myself away—with no promises to return?”

“Katsa, a man would be a fool to try to keep you in a cage.”

“But that doesn’t tell me how you’ll feel, always to be subject to my whim.”