She imagined the argument, because it helped her to come to her decision.
When they'd eaten their dinner she rolled up the maps and fastened their belongings to the saddle. "Up you go, Bitterblue. We can't waste this night. We must move on."
"Po warned you not to run the horse ragged," Bitterblue said.
"The horse is about to enjoy a very thorough rest. We're heading into the mountains, and once we get a bit higher we'll be setting him free."
"Into the mountains," Bitterblue said. "What do you mean, into the mountains?"
Katsa scattered the remains of their fire. She dug a hole with her dagger to hide the bones of their dinner. "There's no safety for us in Monsea. We're going to cross the mountains into Sunder."
Bitterblue stood still beside the horse and stared at her. "Cross the mountains? These mountains, here?"
"Yes. The mountain pass at the northern border will be guarded. We must find our own passageway, here."
"Even in summer, no one crosses these mountains," the girl said. "It's almost winter. We have no warmer clothes. We have no tools, only your dagger and my knife. It's not possible. We'll never survive."
Katsa had a response to that, though she knew none of the particulars. She lifted the girl into the saddle and swung onto the horse behind her. She turned the animal west.
She said, "I will keep you alive."
They didn't really have only one dagger and one knife to bring them over the Monsean peaks into Sunder. They had the dagger and the knife; a length of rope; a needle and some cord; the maps; a fraction of the medicines; most of the gold; a small amount of extra clothing; the ratty blanket Bitterblue wore; two saddlebags; one saddle; and one bridle. And they had anything that Katsa could capture, kill, or construct with her own two hands as they climbed. This, first and foremost, should include the fur of some beast, to protect the child from the nagging cold they encountered here and the dangerous cold that awaited them – and that Katsa wouldn't dwell on, because when she dwelled she began to doubt herself.
She would make a bow, and possibly snowshoes – like the ones she'd worn once or twice in the winter forests outside Randa City. She thought she remembered how the snowshoes looked, and how they worked.
When the sky behind them began to lighten and color, Katsa pulled the child down from the horse. They slept for an hour or so, huddled together in a mossy crevice of rock. The sun rose around them. Katsa woke to the sound of the girl's teeth chattering. She must wake Bitterblue, and they must get moving; and before the day was out, she must have a solution to the cold that gave this girl no rest.
Bitterblue blinked at the light.
"We're higher," she said. "We've climbed in the night." Katsa handed the child what was left of yesterday's dinner. "Yes."
"You still have it in your head for us to cross the mountains."
"It's the only place in Monsea Leck won't search for us."
"Because he knows we'd be mad to try it."
There was something petulant in the child's tone, the first hint of complaint from the girl since Katsa and Po had found her in the forest. Well, she had a right. She was tired and cold; her mother was dead. Katsa spread the map of the Monsean peaks across her lap and said nothing.
"There are bears in the mountains," Bitterblue said. "The bears are asleep until spring," Katsa said.
"There are other animals. Wolves. Mountain lions. Animals you've not seen in the Middluns. And snow you've not seen. You don't know what these mountains are like."
Between two mountain peaks on Katsa's map was a path that seemed likely to be the least complicated route into Sunder. Grella's Pass, according to the scrawled words, and presumably the only route through the peaks that had been traveled by another.
Katsa rolled up her maps and slipped them into a saddlebag. She hoisted the girl back up into the saddle. "Who is Grella?" she asked.
Bitterblue snorted and said nothing. Katsa swung onto the horse behind the child. They rode for a number of minutes before Bitterblue spoke.
"Grella was a famous Monsean mountain explorer," she said. "He died in the pass that bears his name."
"Was he Graced?"
"No. He wasn't Graced like you. But he was mad like you."
The sting of the remark didn't touch Katsa. There was no reason for Bitterblue to believe that a who'd only recently seen her first mountain could guide them through Grella's Pass. Katsa herself wasn't sure of it. She knew only that when she weighed the danger of the King of Monsea against the danger of bears, wolves, blizzards, and ice, she found with utter certainty her Grace to be better equipped to face the mountains.
So Katsa said nothing, and she didn't change her mind. When the wind picked up and Katsa felt Bitterblue shivering, she drew the child close, and covered her hands with her own. The horse stumbled its way upward, and Katsa thought about their saddle. If she took it apart and soaked it and beat it, its leather would soften. It would make a rough coat for Bitterblue, or perhaps trousers. There was no reason to waste it, if it could be made to provide warmth; and very soon the horse would need it no longer.
They climbed blindly, even during the day, never knowing what they might encounter next, for the hills and trees rose before them and hid the higher terrain from their view. Katsa caught squirrels and fish and mice for their meals, and rabbits, if they were lucky. Beside their fire every night, she stretched and dried the pelts of their dinners. She rubbed fish oils and fat into the hides. She pieced together the pelts, experimenting with them and persisting until she'd made the child a rough fur hood, with ends that wrapped around her neck like a scarf.
"It smells funny," Bitterblue said, "but it's warm."
That was all Katsa needed to hear.
The terrain grew rougher, and the brush wilder and more desperate looking. At night as the fire burned and Bitterblue slept, Katsa heard rustles around their camp that she hadn't heard before. Rustles that made the horse nervous; and howls sometimes, not so far away, that woke the child and brought her, shivering, to Katsa's side, admitting to nightmares. About strange howling monsters and sometimes her mother, she said, not seeming to want to elaborate. Katsa didn't prod.
It was on one of these nights when the sound of the wolves drove the child to Katsa that Katsa set down the stick she was whittling into an arrow and put her arm around the girl. She rubbed warmth into Bitterblue's chapped hands. And then she told the child, because it was on her own mind, about Katsa's cousin Raffin, who loved the art of medicine and would be ten times the king his father was; and about Helda, who had befriended Katsa when no one else would and thought of nothing but marrying her off to some lord; and about the Council, and the night Katsa and Oll and Giddon had rescued Bitterblue's grandfather and Katsa had scuffled with a stranger in Murgon's gardens and left him lying unconscious on the ground – a stranger who'd turned out to be Po.
Bitterblue laughed at that, and Katsa told her how she and Po had become friends, and how Raffin had nursed Bitterblue's grandfather back to health; and how Katsa and Po had gone to Sunder to unravel the truth behind the kidnapping and followed the clues into Monsea and to the mountains, the forest, and the girl.
"You aren't really like the person in the stories," Bitterblue said. "The stories I heard before I met you."
Katsa braced herself against the flood of memories that never seemed to lose their freshness and always made her ashamed. "The stories are true," she said. "I am that person."
"But how can you be? You wouldn't break an innocent man's arm, or cut off his fingers."