She took her dagger from her belt and held it out to him. He looked back at her with quiet eyes, understanding. “It won’t come to that,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Take it anyway.”

He set his mouth but didn’t argue. He took the dagger and slid it into his own belt. She pulled the knife from her boot and passed it to him. She handed him the bow and helped him fasten the quiver of arrows onto his back.

“There’s not much we can do about my hands and feet,” she said, “but at least I’m unarmed. You’d stand a chance against me, Po, if you had a blade in each hand and I had none.”

“It won’t come to that.”

No, it probably wouldn’t. But if it did, there was no harm in being prepared. She watched his face, his eyes, which dimly glowed. His tired eyes, his dear eyes. He’d be better able to defend himself if her hands were bound. She wondered, should they bind her hands?

“And now you’ve crossed into the realm of the absurd,” he said.

She grinned. “We should try it, though, in our fights.”

A smile twitched in the corner of his mouth. “I could agree to that, sometime, when all of this is behind us.”

“Now,” she said, “let’s find your cousin.”

Chapter Twenty-four

IT WAS NOT easy for her to walk helplessly through the forest, Po deciding where to go and knowing when and where to hide, freezing in his tracks at the sense of things she couldn’t see or hear. His Grace was invaluable, she knew that. But Katsa had never felt so much like a child.

“She became hopeful when she saw me,” Po said, speaking quickly as they rushed through the trees. “Ashen did. At the sight of me her heart filled with hope, for Bitterblue.”

This hope was what directed their steps now. Ashen had hoped so hard for Po to find Bitterblue that she’d left him with a sense of a place she believed Bitterblue to be, a particular spot both she and the child knew from the rides they took together. It was south of the mountain-pass road, in a hollow with a stream.

“I know a bit of how it looks,” Po said. “But I don’t know exactly where it is, and I don’t know if she would’ve stayed there once she realized the entire army was searching for her.”

“At least we know where to start,” Katsa said. “She can’t have gone too far.”

They raced through the forest. The snow had stopped, and water dripped from pine needles and rushed through the streams. They passed patches of mud trampled with the feet of the soldiers who sought them.

“If she’s left great footprints like these, they’ll have found her by now,” Katsa said.

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

More than once a soldier came uncomfortably near, and Po altered their path in order to skirt around him. One time while avoiding one soldier they nearly ran into another. They scrambled up a tree, and Po readied an arrow, but the fellow never took his eyes from the ground. “Princess Bitterblue,” the man called. “Come now, Princess. Your father is very worried for you.”