A tear ran down her face now, and she kept talking, quickly, as if she could no longer contain her story. “He began to send animals in to us, mice all cut up, dogs and cats, still alive, crying and bleeding. It was horrible. And then one day the girl who brought our food had cuts on her face, three lines on each cheek, bleeding freely. And other injuries, too, that we couldn’t see. She wasn’t walking well. When we asked her what happened, she said she couldn’t remember. She was a girl my age.”

She stopped for a moment, choked with tears. She wiped her face on her shoulder. “That’s when my mother decided we had to escape. We tied sheets and blankets together and dropped out through the windows. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it, for fear. But my mother talked me through it, all the way down.” She stared into the flames. “My mother killed a guard, with a knife. We ran for the mountains. We hoped the king would assume we’d taken the Port Road to the sea. But on the second morning we saw them coming after us, across the fields. My mother twisted her ankle in some foxhole. She couldn’t run. She sent me ahead, to hide in the forest.”

The girl breathed furiously, wiped her face again, clenched her hands into fists. Through some massive force of will, she stopped the fall of her tears. She grasped the knife that lay in her lap and spoke bitterly. “If I were trained in archery. Or if I could use a knife. Perhaps I could have killed my father when this whole thing started.”

“By some accounts, it’s too late,” Po said. “But I’ll kill him tomorrow, before he does anything more.”

Bitterblue’s eyes darted to his. “Why you? Why not her, if she’s the better fighter?”

“Leck’s Grace doesn’t work on me,” Po said. “It works on Katsa. This we learned today, when we met him in the fields. I must be the one to kill him, for he can’t manipulate me or confuse me as he can Katsa.”

He offered Bitterblue one of the quail, skewered on a stick. She took it and watched him closely. “It’s true that his Grace lost some of its power over me,” she said, “when he hurt my mother. And it lost some of its power over my mother when he threatened me. But why does it not work on you?”

“I can’t say,” Po said. “He’s hurt a lot of people. There may be many for whom his Grace is weak—but none likely to admit it, for fear of his vengeance.”

Bitterblue narrowed her eyes. “How did he hurt you?”

“He kidnapped my grandfather,” Po said. “He murdered my aunt before my eyes. He threatens my cousin.”

Bitterblue seemed satisfied by this; or, at least, she turned to her food and ate ravenously for a number of minutes. She glanced at him occasionally, at his hands as he tended the fire.