She would make a bow, and possibly snowshoes—like the ones she’d worn once or twice in the winter forests outside Randa City. She thought she remembered how the snowshoes looked, and how they worked.

When the sky behind them began to lighten and color, Katsa pulled the child down from the horse. They slept for an hour or so, huddled together in a mossy crevice of rock. The sun rose around them. Katsa woke to the sound of the girl’s teeth chattering. She must wake Bitterblue, and they must get moving; and before the day was out, she must have a solution to the cold that gave this girl no rest.

BITTERBLUE BLINKED at the light.

“We’re higher,” she said. “We’ve climbed in the night.”

Katsa handed the child what was left of yesterday’s dinner. “Yes.”

“You still have it in your head for us to cross the mountains.”

“It’s the only place in Monsea Leck won’t search for us.”

“Because he knows we’d be mad to try it.”

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. Well, she had a right. She was tired and cold; her mother was dead. Katsa spread the map of the Monsean peaks across her lap and said nothing.

“There are bears in the mountains,” Bitterblue said.

“The bears are asleep until spring,” Katsa said.

“There are other animals. Wolves. Mountain lions. Animals you’ve not seen in the Middluns. And snow you’ve not seen. You don’t know what these mountains are like.”

Between two mountain peaks on Katsa’s map was a path that seemed likely to be the least complicated route into Sunder. Grella’s Pass, according to the scrawled words, and presumably the only route through the peaks that had been traveled by another.

Katsa rolled up her maps and slipped them into a saddlebag. She hoisted the girl back up into the saddle. “Who is Grella?” she asked.

Bitterblue snorted and said nothing. Katsa swung onto the horse behind the child. They rode for a number of minutes before Bitterblue spoke.

“Grella was a famous Monsean mountain explorer,” she said. “He died in the pass that bears his name.”

“Was he Graced?”

“No. He wasn’t Graced like you. But he was mad like you.”

The sting of the remark didn’t touch Katsa. There was no reason for Bitterblue to believe that a Graceling who’d only recently seen her first mountain could guide them through Grella’s Pass. Katsa herself wasn’t sure of it. She knew only that when she weighed the danger of the King of Monsea against the danger of bears, wolves, blizzards, and ice, she found with utter certainty her Grace to be better equipped to face the mountains.

So Katsa said nothing, and she didn’t change her mind. When the wind picked up and Katsa felt Bitterblue shivering, she drew the child close, and covered her hands with her own. The horse stumbled its way upward, and Katsa thought about their saddle. If she took it apart and soaked it and beat it, its leather would soften. It would make a rough coat for Bitterblue, or perhaps trousers. There was no reason to waste it, if it could be made to provide warmth; and very soon the horse would need it no longer.