“You’ve healed well,” Bitterblue said. “There’s no question who won that fight.”

“For all that,” Katsa said, “we weren’t evenly matched, and the cat had the advantage. On a different day it would’ve killed me.”

“I wish I had your skill,” Bitterblue said. “I’d like to be able to defend myself against anything.”

It wasn’t the first time Bitterblue had said something like that. And it was only one of countless times Katsa had remembered, with a stab of panic, that Bitterblue was wrong; that in her one and only encounter with Leck, Katsa had been defenseless.

STILL, BITTERBLUE didn’t have to be as defenseless as she was. When Patch teased her one day about the knife she wore sheathed at her belt—the same knife, big as her forearm, she’d carried since the day Katsa and Po had found her in Leck’s forest—Katsa decided the time had come to make a threat of Bitterblue. Or as much of a threat as the child could be. How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people—girls, women—went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

And so Katsa began to teach the girl. First to feel comfortable with a knife in her hand. To hold it properly, so that it wouldn’t slip from her fingers; to carry it easily, as if it were a natural extension of her arm. This first lesson gave the child more trouble than Katsa had anticipated. The knife was heavy. It was also sharp. It made Bitterblue nervous to carry an open blade across a floor that lurched and dipped. She held the hilt much too tightly, so tightly her arm ached and blisters formed on her palm.

“You fear your own knife,” Katsa said.

“I’m afraid of falling on it,” Bitterblue said, “or hurting someone with it by accident.”

“That’s natural enough. But you’re just as likely to lose control of it if you’re holding it too tightly as too loosely. Loosen your grip, child. It won’t fall from your fingers if you hold it as I’ve taught you.”

And so the child would relax the hand that held the knife, until the floor tipped again or one of the sailors came near; and then she would forget what Katsa had said and grip the blade again with all her strength.

Katsa changed tactics. She put an end to official lessons, and instead had Bitterblue walk around the ship with the knife in her hand all afternoon for several days. Knife in hand, the child visited the sailors who were her friends, climbed the ladder between decks, ate meals in the galley, and craned her neck to watch Katsa scrambling around in the riggings. At first she sighed often and passed the knife heavily from one hand to the other. But then, after a day or two, it seemed not to bother her so much. A few days more and the knife swung loosely at her side. Not forgotten, for Katsa could see the care she took with the blade when the floor rocked, or when a friend was near. But comfortable in her hand. Familiar. And now, finally, it was time for the girl to learn how to use the weapon she held.