And Katsa felt certain again that they were doing the right thing, to climb toward Grella’s Pass, to the only place Leck wouldn’t follow. Because Katsa couldn’t protect Bitterblue unless her power remained her own. Her arm tightened around the girl. “You should know that my Grace isn’t just fighting, child. My Grace is survival. I’ll bring you through these mountains.”

The child didn’t answer, but she put her head on Katsa’s lap, curled her arm onto Katsa’s leg, and burrowed against her. She fell asleep like that, to the howl of the wolves, and Katsa decided not to pick up her whittling again. They dozed together before the fire; and then Katsa woke and lifted the girl onto the horse. She took the reins and led the beast upward through the Monsean night.

THE DAY came when the terrain grew impossible for the horse. Katsa didn’t want to kill the animal, but she forced herself to consider it. There was leather to be gotten from him. And if he were left alive, he would wander the hills and give the soldiers who found him a clue to the fugitives’ location. On the other hand, if Katsa killed the horse, she couldn’t possibly dispose of his entire body. They would have to leave the carcass on the mountainside for the scavengers; and if soldiers found it, its bones picked clean, it would serve as a much more definite marker of their location and direction than a horse wandering free. Katsa decided with some relief that the horse must live. They removed his bags, his saddle, and his bridle. They wished him well and sent him on his way.

They climbed with their own hands and feet, Katsa helping Bitterblue up the steepest slopes, and lifting her onto rocks too big for her to climb. Thankfully, on the day she’d slid down the walls of her castle clinging to knotted sheets, Bitterblue had worn good boots. But she tripped now over her ratty dress. Finally, Katsa cut the skirts away and fashioned them into a crude pair of trousers. The girl’s passage after that was faster and less frustrating.

The saddle leather was stiffer than Katsa had anticipated. She fought with it at night while Bitterblue slept, and finally decided to cut the girl four makeshift leggings, one for each lower leg and one for each upper leg, with straps to tie them in place over the trousers. They looked rather comical, but they gave her some protection from the cold and the damp. For more and more often now, as they trudged upward, snow drifted from the sky.

FOOD BECAME SCARCE. Katsa let no animal go to waste; if something moved, she brought it down. She ate little and gave most of their food to Bitterblue, who gobbled down whatever she was given.

In the light of each morning, Katsa removed the girl’s boots and checked her feet for blisters. She inspected the girl’s hands to make sure that her fingers weren’t frostbitten. She rubbed ointment into Bitterblue’s cracked skin. She handed Bitterblue the water flask every time they stopped to rest. And Katsa stopped them often for these rests, for she began to suspect that this child would collapse before admitting she was tired.