He walked smoothly, with his old ease. He seemed strong. Too thin, but when she commented on it, he said, “Fish aren’t particularly fattening, Katsa, and I’ve eaten little but fish since you left. I can’t tell you how sick to the skies I am of fish.” They brought out bread for him then, and apples, and dried apricots and cheese, and spread it across the table. He ate, and laughed, and declared himself to be in raptures.

“The apricots come from Lienid,” Katsa said, “by way of Suncliff, and Lienid again, and a place in the middle of the Lienid seas, and finally Monport.”

He grinned at her, and his eyes caught the light of the fire in the fireplace, and Katsa was very happy. “You have a story to tell me,” he said, “and I can see it has a happy ending. But will you start at the beginning?”

And so they started at the beginning. Katsa supplied the major points, and Bitterblue the details. “Katsa made me a hat of animal furs,” Bitterblue said. “Katsa fought a mountain lion.” Katsa made snowshoes. Katsa stole a pumpkin. Bitterblue listed Katsa’s achievements one by one, as if she were bragging about her older sister; and Katsa didn’t mind. The amusing parts of the tale made it easier to relate the grim.

It was during the story of what had happened at Po’s castle that Katsa’s mind caught on something that had nagged at her. Po was distracted. He watched the table instead of the people speaking; his face was absent, he wasn’t listening. At the very moment she recognized his inattention he raised his eyes to her. For an instant he seemed to see her and focus on her, but then he stared emptily into his hands again. She could have sworn a kind of sadness settled into the lines of his mouth.

Katsa paused in her story, suddenly—strangely—frightened. She studied his face, but she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for. “The long and the short of it is that Leck had us under his spell,” she said, “until I had one flash of clarity and killed him.” I’ll tell you the truth of what really happened later, she thought to him.

He winced, perceptibly, and she was alarmed; but an instant later he was smiling as if nothing was wrong, and she wondered if she’d imagined it. “And then you came back,” he said cheerily.

“As fast as we could,” Katsa said, biting her lip, confused. “And now I’ve a ring to return to you. Your castle is a gorgeous place, just as you said.”

The pain that broke across his face, the misery, was so acute that she gasped. It vanished as quickly as it had come but she’d seen it this time, she knew she’d seen it, and she could no longer mask her alarm. She shot up from her seat and reached out to him, not certain what she was going to do or say.