THE ROAD was clear and swift, but the road didn’t lead straight to Po. The party turned west eventually into fields piled high with ice and snow, and Katsa felt the slackening of their pace severely. The horses labored to break a path through snow that reached sometimes to their shoulders.

Days later the party burst under the cover of the forest, and this was easier going. And then the land began to rise, and the trees to peter out. Soon they were climbing. They swung down from their mounts, all except for the queen, and picked their way uphill on foot.

They were nearly there, nearly there; and Katsa drove her companions fiercely, dragging the horses, emptying her mind of everything but their ferocious progress forward.

“I believe we’ve lamed one of the horses,” Skye called up to her, early one morning when they were so close she could feel her body humming with it. She stopped and turned to look back. Skye gestured to the horse he was leading. “See? I’m sure the poor beast is limping.”

The animal’s head drooped, and it sighed deeply through its nostrils. Katsa grasped for her patience. “It’s not limping,” she said. “It’s only tired, and we’re nearly there.”

“How can you say that when you haven’t even seen it take one step?”

“Well, step, then.”

“I can’t until you’ve moved.”

Katsa glared at him, murderously. She clenched her teeth. “Hold on tight, Lady Queen,” she said to Bitterblue, who sat on her horse. She gripped the animal’s halter and yanked the beast forward.

“Still doing your best to ruin the horses, I see.”

Katsa froze. The voice came from above rather than behind, and it didn’t quite sound like Skye. She turned.

“I thought it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all that,” he said—and there, he was there, standing straight, eyes glimmering, mouth twitching, and the path he’d plowed through the snow stretching behind him. Katsa cried out and ran, tackling Po so hard that he fell back into the snow and she on top of him. And he laughed, and held her tight, and she was crying; and then Bitterblue came and threw herself squealing on top of them; and Skye came and helped them all up. Po embraced his cousin properly. He embraced his brother, and they messed up each other’s hair and laughed at each other and embraced again. And then Katsa was in his arms again, crying hot tears into his neck, and holding him so tightly he complained he could not breathe.

Po shook the hands of the smiling, exhausted guards and led the party, lame horse and all, up to his cabin.

Chapter Thirty-seven

THE CABIN was clean, and in better repair than it had been when they’d found it. A stack of wood stood outside the door; a fire burned brightly in the fireplace; the cabinet still stood crookedly on three legs, but the dust was gone: a handsome bow hung on the wall. Katsa absorbed all this in a glance. And that was enough of that, for it was Po she wanted to fill her eyes with.