“Katsa.”

She looked up. The flames danced in the silver and gold of his eyes and caught the hoops in his ears. His face was all light.

“Tell me,” he said. “Whose idea was the Council?”

“It was mine.”

“And who has decided what missions the Council carries out?”

“I have, ultimately.”

“Who has planned each mission?”

“I have, with Raffin and Oll and the others.”

He watched his meat cooking over the fire. He turned it, and shook it absently, so the juice fell spitting into the flames. He raised his eyes to her again.

“I don’t see how you can compare us,” he said, “and find yourself lacking in intelligence, or unthinking or unfeeling. I’ve had to spend my entire life hammering out the emotions of others, and myself, in my mind. If my mind is clearer, sometimes, than yours, it’s because I’ve had more practice. That’s the only difference between us.”

He focused on his meat again. She watched him, listening.

“I wish you would remember the Council,” he said. “I wish you would remember that when we met, you were rescuing my grandfather, for no other reason than that you didn’t believe he deserved to be kidnapped.”

He leaned into the fire then and added another branch to the flames. They sat quietly, huddled in the light, surrounded by darkness.

Chapter Seventeen

IN THE MORNING, she woke before he did. She followed the dribble of water downstream, until she found a place where it formed something larger than a puddle but smaller than a pool. There she bathed as well as she could. She shivered, but she didn’t mind the coldness of air and water; it woke her completely. When she tried to untie her hair and untangle it she met with the usual frustration. She yanked and tugged, but her fingers could not find a way through the knots. She tied it back up. She dried herself as best she could, and dressed. When she walked back into the clearing, he was awake, tying his bags together.

“Would you cut my hair off, if I asked you?”

He looked up, eyebrows raised. “You’re not thinking of trying to disguise yourself?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just that it drives me mad, and I’ve never wanted it, and I’d be so much more comfortable if I could have it all off.”

“Hmm.” He examined the great knot gathered at the nape of her neck. “It is rather wound together, like a bird’s nest,” he said, and at her glare, he laughed. “If you truly wanted me to, I could cut it off, but I don’t imagine you’d be particularly pleased with the result. Why don’t you wait until we’ve reached the inn and have the innkeeper’s wife do it, or one of the women in town?”

Katsa sighed. “Very well. I can live with it for one more day.”

Po disappeared down the path from which she’d come. She rolled up her blanket and began to carry their belongings to the horses.