Graceling

CHAPTER ONE

In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind. One that had so far proven correct, as Oll's maps tended to do. Katsa ran her hand along the cold walls and counted doors and passageways as she went. Turning when it was time to turn; stopping finally before an opening that should contain a stairway leading down. She crouched and felt forward with her hands. There was a stone step, damp and slippery with moss, and another one below it. This was Oll's staircase, then. She only hoped that when he and Giddon followed her with their torches, they would see the moss slime, tread carefully, and not waken the dead by clattering headlong down the steps.

Katsa slunk down the stairway. One left turn and two right turns. She began to hear voices as she entered a corridor where the darkness flickered orange with the light of a torch set in the wall. Across from the torch was another corridor where, according to Oll, anywhere from two to ten guards should be standing watch before a certain cell at the passageway's end.

These guards were Katsa's mission. It was for them that she had been sent first.

Katsa crept toward the light and the sound of laughter. She could stop and listen, to get a better sense of how many she would face, but there was no time. She pulled her hood down low and swung around the corner.

She almost tripped over her first four victims, who were sitting on the floor across from each other, their backs against the wall, legs splayed, the air stinking with whatever strong drink they'd brought down here to pass the time of their watch. Katsa kicked and struck at temples and necks, and the four men lay slumped together on the floor before amazement had even registered in their eyes.

There was only one more guard, sitting before the cell bars at the end of the corridor. He scrambled to his feet and slid his sword from its sheath. Katsa walked toward him, certain that the torch at her back hid her face, and particularly her eyes, from his sight. She measured his size, the way he moved, the steadiness of the arm that held the sword toward her.

"Stop there. It's clear enough what you are." His voice was even. He was brave, this one. He cut the air with his sword, in warning. "You don't frighten me."

He lunged toward her. She ducked under his blade and whirled her foot out, clipping his temple. He dropped to the ground.

She stepped over him and ran to the bars, squinting into the darkness of the cell. A shape huddled against the back wall, a person too tired or too cold to care about the fighting going on. Arms wrapped around legs, and head tucked between knees. He was shivering – she could hear his breath. She shifted, and the light glanced over his crouched form. His hair was white and cut close to his head. She saw the glimmer of gold in his ear. Oll's maps had served them well, for this man was a Lienid. He was the one they were looking for.

She pulled on the door latch. Locked. Well, that was no surprise, and it wasn't her problem. She whistled once, low, like an owl. She stretched the brave guard flat on his back and dropped one of her pills into his mouth. She ran up the corridor, turned the four unfortunates on their backs beside each other, and dropped a pill into each mouth. Just as she was beginning to wonder if Oll and Giddon had lost themselves in the dungeons, they appeared around the corner and slipped past her.

"A quarter hour, no more," she said.

"A quarter hour, My Lady." Oll's voice was a rumble. "Go safely."

Their torchlight splashed the walls as they approached the cell. The Lienid man moaned and drew his arms in closer. Katsa caught a glimpse of his torn, stained clothing. She heard Giddon's ring of lock picks clink against itself. She would have liked to have waited to see that they opened the door, but she was needed elsewhere. She tucked her packet of pills into her sleeve and ran.

The cell guards reported to the dungeon guard, and the dungeon guard reported to the underguard. The underguard reported to the castle guard. The night guard, the king's guard, the wall guard, and the garden guard also reported to the castle guard. As soon as one guard noticed another's absence, the alarm would be raised, and if Katsa and her men weren't far enough away, all would be lost. They would be pursued, it would come to bloodshed; they would see her eyes, and she would be recognized. So she had to get them all, every guard. Oll had guessed there would be twenty. Prince Raffin had made her thirty pills, just in case.

Most of the guards gave her no trouble. If she could sneak up on them, or if they were crowded in small groups, they never knew what hit them. The castle guard was a bit more complicated, because five guards defended his office. She swirled through the lot of them, kicking and kneeing and hitting, and the castle guard jumped up from his guardhouse desk, burst through the door, and ran into the fray.

"I know a Graceling when I see one." He jabbed with his sword, and she rolled out of the way. "Let me see the colors of your eyes, boy. I'll cut them out. Don't think I won't."

It gave her some pleasure to knock him on the head with the hilt of her knife. She grabbed his hair, dragged him onto his back, and dropped a pill onto his tongue. They would all say, when they woke to their headaches and their shame, that the culprit had been a Graceling boy, Graced with fighting, acting alone. They would assume she was a boy, because in her plain trousers and hood she looked like one, and because when people were attacked it never occurred to anyone that it might have been a girl. And none of them had caught a glimpse of Oll or Giddon: She had seen to that.

No one would think of her. Whatever the Graceling Lady Katsa might be, she was not a criminal who lurked around dark courtyards at midnight, disguised. And besides, she was supposed to be en route east. Her uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, had seen her off just that morning, the whole city watching, with Captain Oll and Giddon, Randa's underlord, escorting her. Only a day of very hard riding in the wrong direction could have brought her south to King Murgon's court.

Katsa ran through the courtyard, past flower beds, fountains, and marble statues of Murgon. It was quite a pleasant courtyard, really, for such an unpleasant king; it smelled of grass and rich soil, and the sweetness of dew-dripped flowers. She raced through Murgon's apple orchard, a trail of drugged guards stretching out behind her. Drugged, not dead: an important distinction. Oll and Giddon, and most of the rest of the secret Council, had wanted her to kill them. But at the meeting to plan this mission, she'd argued that killing them would gain no time.

"What if they wake?" Giddon had said.

Prince Raffin had been offended. "You doubt my medicine. They won't wake."

"It would be faster to kill them," Giddon had said, his brown eyes insistent. Heads in the dark room had nodded.

"I can do it in the time allotted," Katsa had said, and when Giddon had started to protest, she'd held up her hand. "Enough. I won't kill them. If you want them killed, you can send someone else."

Oll had smiled and clapped the young lord on the back. "Just think, Lord Giddon, it'll make it more fun for us. The perfect robbery, past all of Murgon's guards, and nobody hurt? It's a good game."

The room had erupted with laughter, but Katsa hadn't even cracked a smile. She wouldn't kill, not if she didn't have to. A killing couldn't be undone, and she'd killed enough. Mostly for her uncle. King Randa thought her useful. When border ruffians were stirring up trouble, why send an army if you could send a single representative? It was much more economical. But she'd killed for the Council, too, when it couldn't be avoided. This time it could be avoided.

At the far end of the orchard she came upon a guard who was old, as old, perhaps, as the Lienid. He stood in a grove of yearling trees, leaning on his sword, his back round and bent. She snuck up behind him and paused. A tremor shook the hands that rested on the hilt of his blade.

She didn't think much of a king who didn't retire his guards in comfort when they'd gotten too old to hold a sword steady.

But if she left him, he would find the others she'd felled and raise the alarm. She struck him once, hard, on the back of the head, and he slumped and let out a puff of air. She caught him and lowered him to the ground, as gently as she could, and then dropped a pill into his mouth. She took a moment to run her fingers along the lump forming on his skull. She hoped his head was strong.

She had killed once by accident, a memory she held close to her consciousness. It was how her Grace had announced its nature, a decade ago. She'd been a child, barely eight years old. A man who was some sort of distant cousin had visited the court. She hadn't liked him – his heavy perfume, the way he leered at the girls who served him, the way his leer followed them around the room, the way he touched them when he thought no one was watching. When he'd started to pay Katsa some attention, she had grown wary. "Such a pretty little one," he'd said. "Graceling eyes can be so very unattractive. But you, lucky girl, look better for it. What is your Grace, my sweetness? Storytelling? Mind reading? I know. You're a dancer."

Katsa hadn't known what her Grace was. Some Graces took longer than others to surface. But even if she had known, she wouldn't have cared to discuss it with this cousin. She'd scowled at the man and turned away. But then his hand had slid toward her leg, and her hand had flown out and smashed him in the face. So hard and so fast that she'd pushed the bones of his nose into his brain.

Ladies in the court had screamed; one had fainted. When they'd lifted him from the pool of blood on the floor and he'd turned out to be dead, the court had grown silent, backed away. Frightened eyes – not just those of the ladies now, but those of the soldiers, the sworded underlords – all directed at her. It was fine to eat the meals of the king's chef, who was Graced with cooking, or send their horses to the king's Graced horse doctor. But a girl Graced with killing? This one was not safe. Another king would have banished her, or killed her, even if she was his sister's child. But Randa was clever. He could see that in time his niece might serve a practical purpose. He sent her to her chambers and kept her there for weeks as punishment, but that was all. When she emerged, they all ran to get out of her path. They'd never liked her before, for no one liked the Graced, but at least they'd tolerated her presence. Now there was no pretense of friendliness. "Watch for the blue-eyed green-eyed one," they would whisper to guests. "She killed her cousin, with one strike. Because he complimented her eyes." Even Randa kept out of her way. A murderous dog might be useful to a king, but he didn't want it sleeping at his feet.

Prince Raffin was the only one who sought her company. "You won't do it again, will you? I don't think my father will let you kill anyone you want."

"I never meant to kill him," she said.

"What happened?"

Katsa sent her mind back. "I felt like I was in danger. So I hit him."

Prince Raffin shook his head. "You need to control a Grace," he said. "Especially a killing Grace. You must, or my father will stop us seeing each other."

This was a frightening notion. "I don't know how to control it."

Raffin considered this. "You could ask Oll. The king's spies know how to hurt without killing. It's how they get information."

Raffin was eleven, three years Katsa's senior, and by her young standards, very wise. She took his advice and went to Oll, King Randa's graying captain and his spymaster. Oll wasn't foolish; he knew to fear the quiet girl with one eye blue and one eye green. But he also had some imagination. He wondered, as it had occurred to no one else to wonder, whether Katsa hadn't been just as shocked by her cousin's death as everyone else. And the more he thought about it, the more curious he became about her potential.

He started their training by setting rules. She would not practice on him, and she would not practice on any of the king's men. She would practice on dummies that she made out of sacks, sewn together and filled with grain. She would practice on the prisoners that Oll brought to her, men whose deaths were already decreed.

She practiced every day. She learned her own speed and her own explosive force. She learned the angle, position, and intensity of a killing blow versus a maiming blow. She learned how to disarm a man and how to break his leg, and how to twist his arm so severely that he would stop struggling and beg for release. She learned to fight with a sword and with knives and daggers. She was so fast and focused, so creative, she could find a way to beat a man senseless with both arms tied to her sides. Such was her Grace.

In time her control improved, and she began to practice with Randa's soldiers – eight or ten at a time, and in full suits of armor. Her practices were a spectacle: grown men grunting and clattering around clumsily, an unarmed child whirling and diving among them, knocking them down with a knee or a hand that they didn't see coming until they were already on the floor. Sometimes members of the court would come by to watch her practices. But if she caught their gaze, their eyes would drop and they would hurry on.

King Randa had not minded the sacrifice of Oll's time. He thought it necessary. Katsa wouldn't be useful if she remained uncontrolled. And now in King Murgon's courtyard, no one could criticize her control.

She moved across the grass beside the gravel paths, swiftly, soundlessly. By now Oll and Giddon must almost have reached the garden wall, where two of Murgon's servants, friends of the Council, guarded their horses. She was nearly there herself; she saw the dark line ahead, black against a black sky. Her thoughts rambled, but she wasn't daydreaming. Her senses were sharp. She caught the fall of every leaf in the garden, the rustle of every branch.

And so she was astonished when a man stepped out of the darkness and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his arm around her chest and held a knife to her throat. He started to speak, but in an instant she had deadened his arm, wrenched the knife from his hand, and thrown the blade to the ground. She flung him forward, over her shoulders. He landed on his feet. Her mind raced. He was Graced, a fighter. That much was clear. And unless he had no feeling in the hand that had raked her chest, he knew she was a woman.

He turned back to face her. They eyed each other, warily, each no more than a shadow to the other. He spoke. "I've heard of a lady with this particular Grace."

His voice was gravelly and deep. There was a lilt to his words; it was not an accent she knew. She must learn who he was, so that she could know what to do with him.

"I can't think what that lady would be doing so far from home, running through the courtyard of King Murgon at midnight," he said.

He shifted slightly, placed himself between her and the wall. He was taller than she was, and smooth in his movements, like a cat. Deceptively calm, ready to spring. A torch on the path nearby caught the glimmer of small gold hoops in his ears. And his face was unbearded, like a Lienid. She shifted and swayed, her body ready, like his. She didn't have much time to decide. He knew who she was. But if he was a Lienid, she didn't want to kill him.

"Don't you have anything to say, Lady? Surely you don't think I'll let you pass without an explanation?" There was something playful in his voice.

She watched him, quietly. He stretched his arms in one fluid motion, and her eyes unraveled the bands of gold that gleamed on his fingers. It was enough. The hoops in his ears, the rings, the lilt in his words – it was enough. "You're a Lienid," she said.

"You have good eyesight," he said.

"Not good enough to see the colors of your eyes."

He laughed. "I think I know the colors of yours."

Common sense told her to kill him. "You're one to speak of being far from home," she said. "What's a Lienid doing in the court of King Murgon?"

"I'll tell you my reasons if you'll tell me yours."

"I'll tell you nothing, and you must let me pass."

"Must I?"

"If you don't, I'll have to force you."

"Do you think you can?"

She faked to her right, and he swung away, easily. She did it again, faster. Again, he escaped her easily. He was very good. But she was Katsa.

"I know I can," she said.

"Ah." His voice was amused. "But it might take you hours."

Why was he playing with her? Why wasn't he raising the alarm? Perhaps he was a criminal himself, a Graceling criminal. And if so, did that make him an ally or an enemy? Wouldn't a Lienid approve of her rescue of the Lienid prisoner? Yes – unless he was a traitor. Or unless this Lienid didn't even know the contents of Murgon's dungeons – Murgon had kept the secret well.

The Council would tell her to kill him. The Council would tell her she put them at risk if she left a man alive who knew her identity. But he was unlike any thug she'd ever encountered. He didn't feel brutish or stupid or threatening.

She couldn't kill one Lienid while rescuing another.

She was a fool and she would probably regret it, but she wouldn't do it.

"I trust you," he said, suddenly. He stepped out of her path and waved her forward. She thought him very strange, and impulsive, but she saw he'd relaxed his guard, and she wasn't one to waste an opportunity. In an instant she swung her boot up and clipped him on the forehead. His eyes opened wide with surprise, and he dropped to the ground.

"Maybe I didn't have to do that." She stretched him out, his sleeping limbs heavy. "But I don't know what to think of you, and I've risked enough already, letting you live." She dug the pills out of her sleeve, dropped one into his mouth. She turned his face to the torchlight. He was younger than she'd thought, not much older than she, nineteen or twenty at most. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead, past his ear. The neck of his shirt was open, and the torchlight played along the line of his collarbone.

What a strange character. Maybe Raffin would know who he was.

She shook herself. They would be waiting.

She ran.

They rode hard. They tied the old man to his horse, for he was too weak to hold himself up. They stopped only once, to wrap him in more blankets.

Katsa was impatient to keep moving. "Doesn't he know it's midsummer?"

"He's frozen through, My Lady," Oll said. "He's shivering, he's ill. It's no use if our rescue kills him."

They talked about stopping, building a fire, but there was no time. They had to reach Randa City before daybreak or they would be discovered.

Perhaps I should have killed him, she thought as they thundered through dark forests. Perhaps I should have killed him. He knew who I was.

But he hadn't seemed threatening or suspicious. He'd been more curious than anything. He'd trusted her.

Then again, he hadn't known about the trail of drugged guards she'd left in her wake. And he wouldn't trust her once he woke to that welt on his head.

If he told King Murgon of their encounter, and if Murgon told King Randa, things could get very tricky for the Lady Katsa. Randa knew nothing of the Lienid prisoner, much less of Katsa moonlighting as rescuer.

Katsa shook herself in frustration. These thoughts were no help, and it was done now. They needed to get the grandfather to safety and warmth, and Raffin. She crouched lower in her saddle and urged her horse north.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a land of seven kingdoms. Seven kingdoms, and seven thoroughly unpredictable kings. Why in the name of all that was reasonable would anyone kidnap Prince Tealiff, the father of the Lienid king? He was an old man. He had no power; he had no ambition; he wasn't even well. Word was, he spent most of his days sitting by the fire, or in the sun, looking out at the sea, playing with his great-grandchildren, and bothering no one.

The Lienid people didn't have enemies. They shipped their gold to whoever had the goods to trade for it; they grew their own fruit and bred their own game; they kept to themselves on their island, an ocean removed from the other six kingdoms. They were different. They had a distinctive dark-haired look and distinctive customs, and they liked their isolation. King Ror of Lienid was the least troublesome of the seven kings. He made no treaties with the others, but he made no war, and he ruled his own people fairly.

That the Council's network of spies had traced King Ror's father to King Murgon's dungeons in Sunder answered nothing. Murgon tended not to create trouble among the kingdoms, but often enough he was a party to the trouble, the agent of another man's crime as long as the money was good.

Without a doubt, someone had paid him to hold the Lienid grandfather. The question was, who?

Katsa's uncle, Randa, King of the Middluns, was not involved in this particular trouble. The Council could be certain of this, for Oll was Randa's spymaster and his confidant. Thanks to Oll, the Council knew everything there was to know about Randa.

In truth, Randa usually took care not to involve himself with the other kingdoms. His kingdom sat between Estill and Wester on one axis and between Nander and Sunder on the other. It was a position too tenuous for alliances.

The kings of Wester, Nander, and Estill – they were the source of most of the trouble. They were cast from the same hotheaded mold, all ambitious, all envious. All thoughtless and heartless and inconstant. King Birn of Wester and King Drowden of Nander might form an alliance and pummel Estill's army on the northern borders, but Wester and Nander could never work together for long. Suddenly one would offend the other, and Wester and Nander would become enemies again, and Estill would join Nander to pound Wester.

And the kings were no better to their own people than they were to each other's. Katsa remembered the farmers of Estill that she and Oll had lifted secretly from their makeshift prison in a cowshed weeks before. Estillan farmers who could not pay the tithe to their king, Thigpen, because Thigpen's army had trampled their fields on its way to raid a Nanderan village. Thigpen should have been the one to pay the farmers; even Randa would have conceded this, had his own army done the damage. But Thigpen intended to hang the farmers for nonpayment of the tithe. Yes, Birn, Drowden, and Thigpen kept the Council busy.

It had not always been like this. Wester, Nander, Estill, Sunder, and the Middluns – the five inner kingdoms – had once known how to coexist peacefully. Centuries back they had all been of the same family, ruled by three brothers and two sisters who had managed to negotiate their jealousies without resorting to war. But any acknowledgment of that old family bond was long gone now. The kingdoms' people were at the mercy of the natures of those who rose to be their rulers. It was a gamble, and the current generation did not make for a winning hand.

The seventh kingdom was Monsea. The mountains set Monsea apart from the others, as the ocean did for Lienid. Leck, King of Monsea, was married to Ashen, the sister of King Ror of Lienid. Leck and Ror shared a dislike for the squabbles of the other kingdoms. But this didn't forge an alliance, for Monsea and Lienid were too far removed from each other, too independent, too uninterested in the doings of the other kingdoms.

Not much was known about the Monsean court. King Leck was well liked by his people and had a great reputation for kindness to children, animals, and all helpless creatures. The Monsean queen was a gentle woman. Word was she'd stopped eating the day she'd heard of the Lienid grandfather's disappearance. For of course, the father of the Lienid king was her father as well.

It had to be Wester or Nander or Estill who had kidnapped the Lienid grandfather. Katsa could think of no other possibility, unless Lienid itself was involved. A notion that might seem ridiculous, if it hadn't been for the Lienid man in Murgon's courtyard. His jewelry had been rich: He was a noble of some sort. And any guest of Murgon's warranted suspicion.

But Katsa didn't feel he was involved. She couldn't explain it, but it was what she felt.

Why had Grandfather Tealiff been stolen? What conceivable importance could he have?

They reached Randa City before the sun did, but only just. When the horses' hooves clattered onto the stones of city roads, they slowed their pace. Some in the city were already awake. They couldn't tear through the narrow streets; they couldn't make themselves conspicuous.

The horses carried them past wooden shacks and houses, stone foundries, shops with their shutters closed. The buildings were neat, and most of them had recently been painted. There was no squalor in Randa City. Randa didn't tolerate squalor.

When the streets began to rise, Katsa dismounted. She passed her reins to Giddon and took the reins of Tealiff's horse. Giddon and Oll turned down a street that led east to the forest, leading Katsa's horse behind them. This was the arrangement. A grandfather on horseback and a boy at his side climbing to the castle were less likely to be noticed than four horses and four riders. Oll and Giddon would ride out of the city and wait for her in the trees. Katsa would deliver Teal if to Prince Raffin through a high doorway in a defunct section of the castle wall, the existence of which Oll kept carefully from Randa's notice.

Katsa pulled the old man's blankets more firmly around his head. It was still fairly dark, but if she could see the hoops in his ears, then others would be able to see them as well. He lay on the horse, a huddled shape, whether asleep or unconscious she did not know. If he was unconscious, then she couldn't think how they were going to manage the last leg of the journey, up a crumbling staircase in Randa's wall where the horse couldn't go. She touched his face. He shifted and began to shiver again.

"You must wake, Lord Prince," she said. "I can't carry you up the steps to the castle."

The gray light reflected in his eyes as they opened, and his voice shook with coldness. "Where am I?"

"This is Randa City, in the Middluns," she said. "We're almost to safety."

"I didn't think Randa the type to conduct rescue missions."

She hadn't expected him to be so lucid. "He isn't."

"Humph. Well, I'm awake. You'll not have to carry me. The Lady Katsa, is it?"

"Yes, Lord Prince."

"I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky."

"Yes, Lord Prince."

"I've heard you could kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger."

She smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince."

"Does it make it easier?"

She squinted at his form hunched in the saddle. "I don't understand you."

"To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?"

She laughed. "No, Lord Prince. I'd happily do without both."

"I suppose I owe you my gratitude," he said, and then settled into silence.

She wanted to ask, For what? From what have we rescued you? But he was ill and tired, and he seemed asleep again. She didn't want to pester him. She liked this Lienid grandfather. There weren't many people who wanted to talk about her Grace.

They climbed past shadowed roofs and doorways. She was beginning to feel her sleepless night, and she would not rest again for hours. She replayed the grandfather's words in her mind. His accent was like the man's, the Lienid man's in the courtyard.

In the end, she did carry him, for when the time came she couldn't wake him up. She passed the horse's reins to a child crouched beside the wall, a girl whose father was a friend of the Council. Katsa tipped the old man over her shoulder and staggered, one step at a time, up the rubble of the broken stairway. The final stretch was practically vertical. Only the threat of the lightening sky kept her going; she'd never imagined that a man who looked like he was made of dust could be so heavy.

She had no breath to produce the low whistle that was to be her signal to Raffin, but it didn't matter. He heard her approach.

"The whole city has likely heard your approach," he whispered. "Honestly, Kat, I wouldn't have expected you to be capable of such a racket." He bent down and eased her load onto his own thin shoulders. She leaned against the wall and caught her breath.

"My Grace doesn't give me the strength of a giant," she said. "You Ungraced don't understand. You think if we have one Grace, we have them all."

"I've tasted your cakes, and I remember the needlework you used to do. I've no question a good number of Graces have passed you over." He laughed down at her in the gray light, and she smiled back. "It went as planned?"

She thought of the Lienid in the courtyard. "Yes, for the most."

"Go now," he said, "and safely. I'll take care of this one."

He turned and crept inside with his living bundle. She raced down the broken steps and slipped onto a pathway leading east. She pulled her hood low, and ran toward the pink sky.

CHAPTER THREE

Katsa ran past houses and work shacks, shops and inns. The city was waking, and the streets smelled of baking bread. She ran past the milkman, half asleep on his cart, his horse sighing before him.

She felt light without her burden, and the road sloped downward. She ran quietly and fast into the eastern fields and kept running. A woman carried buckets across a farmyard, the handles hanging from a yoke balanced on her shoulder.

When the trees began, Katsa slowed. She had to move carefully now, lest she break branches or leave boot prints and create a trail straight to the meeting place. Already the way looked a bit traveled. Oll and Giddon and the others on the Council were never as careful as she, and of course the horses couldn't help creating a path. They would need a new meeting place soon.

By the time she broke into the thicket that was their hideout, it was daylight. The horses grazed. Giddon lay on the ground. Oll leaned against a pile of saddlebags. Both men were asleep.

Katsa choked down her annoyance and passed to the horses. She greeted the animals and lifted their hooves, one by one, to check for cracks and gravel. They'd done well, the horses, and at least they knew better than to fall asleep in the forest, so close to the city and such a great distance from where Randa supposed them to be. Her own mount whickered, and Oll stirred behind her.

"And if someone had discovered you," she said, "sleeping at the edge of the forest when you were supposed to be halfway to the eastern border?" She spoke into her saddle and scratched her horse's shoulder. "What explanation would you have given?"

"I didn't mean to sleep, My Lady," Oll replied.

"That's no comfort."

"We don't all have your stamina, My Lady, especially those of us with gray hair. Come now, no harm was done." He shook Giddon, who responded by covering his eyes with his hands. "Wake up, My Lord. We'd best be moving."

Katsa said nothing. She hung her saddlebags and waited by the horses. Oll brought the remaining saddlebags and fastened them in place. "Prince Tealiff is safe, My Lady?"

"He's safe."

Giddon stumbled over, scratching his brown beard. He unwrapped a loaf of bread and held it out to her, but she shook her head. "I'll eat later," she said.

Giddon broke off a piece and handed the loaf to Oll. "Are you angry that we weren't performing strength exercises when you arrived, Katsa? Should we have been doing gymnastics in the treetops?"

"You could've been caught, Giddon. You could've been seen, and then where would you be?"

"You would've thought of some story," Giddon said. "You would've saved us, like you do everyone else." He smiled, his warm eyes lighting up a face that was confident and handsome but that failed to please Katsa at the moment. Giddon was younger even than Raffin, strong, and a good rider. He had no excuse for sleeping.

"Come, My Lord," Oll said. "Let's eat our bread in the saddle. Otherwise our lady will leave without us."

She knew they teased her. She knew they thought her too critical. But she also knew she wouldn't have allowed herself to sleep when it was unsafe to do so.

Then again, they would never have allowed the Graceling Lienid to live. If they knew, they'd be furious, and she wouldn't be able to offer any rational excuse.

They wound their way to one of the forest paths that paralleled the main road and set out eastward. They pulled their hoods low and pushed the horses hard. After a few minutes, the pounding of hooves surrounding her, Katsa's irritation diminished. She couldn't be worried for long when she was moving.

The forests of the southern Middluns gave way to hills, low hills at first that would grow as they neared Estill. They stopped only once, at midday, to change their horses at a secluded inn that had offered its services to the Council.

With fresh horses they made good time, and by nightfall they approached the Estillan border. With an early start they could reach the Estillan estate that was their destination by midmorning, do their business for Randa, and then turn back. They could travel at a reasonable pace and still return to Randa City before nightfall of the following day, which was when they were expected. And then Katsa would know whether Prince Raffin had learned anything from the Lienid grandfather.

They made camp against an enormous rock crag that broke through the base of one of the eastern hills. There was a chill to the night, but they decided against a fire. Mischief hid in the hills along the Estillan border, and though they were safe with two sworded men and Katsa, there was no reason to attract trouble. They ate a supper of bread, cheese, and water from their flasks, and then they climbed into their bedrolls.

"I'll sleep well tonight," Giddon said, yawning. "It's lucky that inn came forward to the Council. We would've ridden the horses into the ground."

"It surprises me, the friends the Council is finding," Oll said.

Giddon propped himself up onto his elbow. "Did you expect it, Katsa? Did you think your Council would spread as it has?"

What had she expected when she'd started the Council? She'd imagined herself, alone, sneaking through passageways and around corners, an invisible force working against the mindlessness of the kings. "I never even imagined it spreading beyond me."

"And now we have friends in almost every kingdom," Giddon said. "People are opening their homes. Did you know one of the Nanderan borderlords brought an entire village behind his walls when the Council learned of a Westeran raiding party? The village was destroyed, but every one of them lived." He settled down onto his side and yawned again. "It's heartening. The Council does some good."

Katsa lay on her back and listened to the men's steady breathing. The horses, too, slept. But not Katsa: Two days of hard riding and a sleepless night between, and she was awake. She watched clouds flying across the sky, blotting out the stars and revealing them again. The night air puffed and set the hill grass rustling.

The first time she'd hurt someone for Randa had been in a border village not far from this camp. An underlord of Randa's had been exposed as a spy, on the payroll of King Thigpen of Estill. The charge was treason and the punishment was death. The underlord had fled toward the Estillan border.

Katsa had been all of ten years old. Randa had come to one of her practice sessions and watched her, an unpleasant smile on his face. "Are you ready to do something useful with your Grace, girl?" he called out to her.

Katsa stopped her kicking and whirling and stood still, struck by the notion that her Grace could have any beneficial use.

"Hmm," Randa said, smirking at her silence. "Your sword is the only bright thing about you. Pay attention, girl. I'm sending you after this traitor. You're to kill him, in public, using your bare hands, no weapons. Just him, no one else. I'm sure we all hope you've learned to control your bloodlust by now."

Katsa shrank suddenly, too small to speak, even if she'd had something to say. She understood his order. He refused her the use of weapons because he didn't want the man to die cleanly. Randa wanted a bloody, anguished spectacle, and he expected her to furnish it.

Katsa set out with Oll and a convoy of soldiers. When the soldiers caught the underlord, they dragged him to the square of the nearest village, where a scattering of startled people watched, slack jawed. Katsa instructed the soldiers to make the man kneel. In one motion she snapped his neck. There was no blood; there was no more than an instant's pain. Most in the crowd didn't even realize what had happened.

When Randa heard what she'd done he was angry, angry enough that he called her to his throne room. He looked down at her from his raised seat, his eyes blue and hard, his smile nothing more than a baring of teeth. "What's the point of a public execution," he said, "if the public misses the part where the fellow dies? I can see that when I give orders I shall have to compensate for your mental ineptitude."

After that his commands included specifics: blood and pain, for this or that length of time. There was no way around what he wanted. The more Katsa did it, the better she got at it. And Randa got what he wished, for her reputation spread like a cancer. Everyone knew what came to those who crossed King Randa of the Middluns.

After a while Katsa forgot about defiance. It became too difficult to imagine.

On their many travels to perform Randa's errands, Oll told the girl of things Randa's spies learned when they crossed into the other kingdoms. Young girls who had disappeared from an Estillan village and reappeared weeks later in a Westeran whorehouse. A man held in a Nanderan dungeon as punishment for his brother's thievery, for his brother was dead, and someone had to be punished. A tax that the King of Wester had decided to levy on the villages of Estill – a tax Wester's soldiers saw fit to collect by slaying Estillan villagers and emptying their pockets.

All these stories Randa's spies reported to their king, and all of them Randa ignored. Now, a Middluns lord who had hidden the majority of his harvest in order to pay a smaller tithe than he owed? Here was worthwhile news; here was a problem relevant to the Middluns. Randa sent Katsa to crack the lord's head open.

Katsa couldn't say where the notion had come from, but once it pushed its way into her mind, it would not leave. What might she be capable of – if she acted of her own volition and outside Randa's domain? It was something she thought about, something to distract herself as she broke fingers for Randa and twisted men's arms from their sockets. And the more she considered the question, the more urgent it became, until she thought she would blaze up and burn from the frustration of not doing it.

In her sixteenth year she brought the idea to Raffin. "It just might work," he said. "I'll help you, of course." Next she went to Oll. Oll was skeptical, even alarmed. He was used to bringing his information to Randa so Randa could decide what action to take. But he saw her side of it eventually, slowly, once he understood that Katsa was determined to do this thing with or without him, and once he convinced himself that it would do the king no harm not to know every move his spymaster made.

In her very first mission, Katsa intercepted a small company of midnight looters that the Estillan king had set on his own people, and sent them fleeing into the hills. It was the happiest and headiest moment of her life.

Next Katsa and Oll rescued a number of Westeran boys enslaved in a Nanderan iron mine. One or two more escapades and the news of their missions began to trickle into useful channels. Some of Oll's fellow spies joined the cause, and one or two underlords at Randa's court, like Giddon. Oll's wife, Bertol, and other women of the castle. They established regular meetings that took place in secluded rooms. There was an atmosphere of adventure at the meetings, of dangerous freedom. It felt like play, too wonderful, Katsa thought sometimes, to be real. Except that it was real. They didn't just talk about subversion; they planned it and carried it out.

Inevitably over time they attracted allies outside the court. The virtuous among Randa's borderlords, who were tired of sitting around while neighboring villages were plundered. Lords from the other kingdoms, and their spies. And bit by bit, the people – innkeepers, blacksmiths, farmers. Everyone was tired of the fool kings. Everyone was willing to take some small risk to lessen the damage of their ambition and disorder and lawlessness.

Tonight, in her camp on the Estillan border, Katsa blinked at the sky, wide awake, and thought about how large the Council had become, how fast it had spread, like one of the vines in Randa's forest.

It was out of her control now. Missions were carried out in the name of the Council in places she'd never been, without her supervision, and all of it had become dangerous. One careless word spoken by the child of some innkeeper, one unlucky encounter across the world between two people she'd never met, and everything would come crashing down. Her missions would end, Randa would see to it. And then, once again, she would be no more than the king's strongarm.

She shouldn't have trusted the strange Lienid.

Katsa crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the stars. She would like to take her horse and race around the hills in circles. That would calm her mind, tire her out. But it would tire her horse as well, and she wouldn't leave Oll and Giddon alone. And besides, one didn't do such things. It wasn't normal.

She snorted, and then listened to make sure that no one woke. Normal. She wasn't normal. A girl Graced with killing, a royal thug? A girl who didn't want the husbands Randa pushed on her, perfectly handsome and thoughtful men, a girl who panicked at the thought of a baby at her breast, or clinging to her ankles.

She wasn't natural.

If the Council were discovered, she would escape to a place where she wouldn't be found. Lienid, or Monsea. She'd live in a cave, in a forest. She'd kill anyone who found her and recognized her.

She wouldn't relinquish the small amount of control she'd taken over her life.

She must sleep.

Sleep, Katsa, she told herself. You need to sleep, to keep your strength.

And suddenly tiredness swept over her, and she was asleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

In the morning they dressed like themselves, Giddon in traveling clothes befitting a Middluns underlord, and Oll in his captain's uniform. Katsa changed into a blue tunic lined with the orange silk of Randa's courts, and the matching trousers she wore to perform Randa's errands, a costume to which he consented only because she was abusive to any dresses she wore while riding. Randa didn't like to think of his Graceling killer doling out punishment in torn and muddy skirts. It was undignified.

Their business in Estill was with an Estillan borderlord who had arranged to purchase lumber from the southern forests of the Middluns. He had paid the agreed price, but then he'd cleared more than the agreed number of trees. Randa wanted payment for the additional lumber, and he wanted the lord punished for altering the agreement without his permission.

"I give you both fair warning," Oll said as they cleared the camp of their belongings. "This lord has a daughter Graced with mind reading."

"Why should you warn us?" Katsa asked. "Isn't she at Thigpen's court?"

"King Thigpen has sent her home to her father."

Katsa yanked hard on the straps that attached her bag to her saddle.

"Are you trying to pull the horse down, Katsa," Giddon said, "or just break your saddlebag?"

Katsa scowled. "No one told me we'd be encountering a mind reader."

"I'm telling you now, My Lady," Oll said, "and there's no reason for concern. She's a child. Most of what she comes up with is nonsense."

"Well, what's wrong with her?"

"What's wrong with her is that most of what she comes up with is nonsense. Or useless, irrelevant, and she blurts out everything she sees. She's out of control. She was making Thigpen nervous. So he sent her home, My Lady, and told her father to send her back when she became useful."

In Estill, as in most of the kingdoms, Gracelings were given up to the king's use by law. The child whose eyes settled into two different colors weeks, months, or on the rarest occasions years after its birth was sent to the court of its king and raised in its king's nurseries. If its Grace turned out to be useful to the king, the child would remain in his service. If not, the child would be sent home. With the court's apologies, of course, because it was difficult for a family to find use for a Graceling. Especially one with a useless Grace, like climbing trees or holding one's breath for an impossibly long time or talking backward. The child might fare well in a farmer's family, working among the fields with no one to see or know. But if a king sent a Graceling home to the family of an innkeeper or a storekeeper in a town with more than one inn or store to choose from, business was bound to suffer. It made no difference what the child's Grace was. People avoided a place if they could, if they were likely to encounter a person with eyes that were two different colors.

"Thigpen's a fool not to keep a mind reader close," Giddon said, "just because she's not useful yet. They're too dangerous. What if she falls under someone else's influence?"

Giddon was right, of course. Whatever else the mind readers might be, they were almost always valuable tools for a king to wield. But Katsa couldn't understand why anyone would want to keep them close. Randa's chef was Graced, and his horse handler, and his winemaker, and one of his court dancers. He had a juggler who could juggle any number of items without dropping them. He had several soldiers, no match for Katsa, but Graced with sword fighting. He had a man who predicted the quality of the next year's harvest. He had a woman brilliant with numbers, the only woman working in a king's countinghouse in all seven kingdoms.

He also had a man who could tell your mood just by putting his hands on you. He was the only Graceling of Randa's who repelled Katsa, the only person in court besides Randa himself whom she took pains to avoid.

"Foolish behavior on the part of Thigpen is never particularly surprising, My Lord," Oll said.

"What kind of mind reader is she?" Katsa asked. "They're not sure, My Lady. She's so unformed. And you know how the mind readers are, their Graces always changing, and so hard to pin down. Adults before they've grown into their full power. But it seems as if this one reads desires. She knows what it is other people want."

"Then she'll know I'll want to knock her senseless if she so much as looks at me." Katsa spoke the words into the mane of her horse. They were not for the ears of her companions, for them to pull apart and make a joke of "Is there anything else I need to know about this borderlord?" she asked aloud as she stepped into her stirrup. "Perhaps he has a guard of a hundred Graced fighters? A trained bear to protect him? Anything else you've forgotten to mention?"

"There's no need to be sarcastic, My Lady," Oll said.

"Your company this morning is as pleasant as always, Katsa," Giddon said.

Katsa spurred her horse forward. She didn't want to see Giddon's laughing face.

The lord's holding stood behind gray stone walls at the crest of a hill of waving grasses. The man who ushered them through the gate and took their horses told them that his lord sat at his breakfast. Katsa, Giddon, and Oll stepped directly into the great hall without waiting for an escort.

The lord's courtier moved forward to block their entrance into the breakfast room. Then he saw Katsa. He cleared his throat and opened the grand doors. "Some representatives from the court of King Randa, My Lord," he said. He slipped behind them without waiting for a response from his master and scampered away.

The lord sat before a feast of pork, eggs, bread, fruit, and cheese, with a servant at his elbow. Both men looked up as they entered, and both men froze. A spoon clattered from the lord's hand onto the table.

"Good morning, My Lord," Giddon said. "We apologize for interrupting your breakfast. Do you know why we're here?"

The lord seemed to struggle to find his voice. "I haven't the slightest idea," he said, his hand at his throat.

"No? Perhaps the Lady Katsa could help you bring it to mind," Giddon said. "Lady?"

Katsa stepped forward.

"All right, all right." The lord stood. His legs jarred the table, and a glass overturned. He was tall and broad shouldered, larger even than Giddon or Oll. Clumsy now with his fluttering hands, and his eyes that flitted around the room but always avoided Katsa. A bit of egg clung to his beard. So foolish, such a big man, so frightened. Katsa kept her face expressionless, so that none of them would know how much she hated this.

"Ah, you've remembered," Giddon said, "have you? You've remembered why we're here?"

"I believe I owe you money," the lord said. "I imagine you've come to collect your debt."

"Very good!" Giddon spoke as if to a child. "And why do you owe us money? The agreement was for how many acres of lumber? Remind me, Captain."

"Twenty acres, My Lord," Oll said.

"And how many acres did the lord remove, Captain?"

"Twenty-three acres, My Lord," Oll said.

"Twenty-three acres!" Giddon said. "That's rather a hefty difference, wouldn't you agree?"

"A terrible mistake." The lord's attempt at a smile was pained. "We never realized we'd need so much. Of course, I'll pay you immediately. Just name your price."

"You've caused King Randa no small inconvenience," Giddon said. "You've decimated three acres of his forest. The king's forests are not limitless."

"No. Of course not. Terrible mistake."

"We've also had to travel for days to settle this matter," Giddon said. "Our absence from court is a great nuisance to the king."

"Of course," the lord said. "Of course."

"I imagine if you doubled your original payment, it would lessen the strain of inconvenience for the king."

The lord licked his lips. "Double the original payment. Yes. That seems quite reasonable."

Giddon smiled. "Very good. Perhaps your man will lead us to your countinghouse."

"Certainly." The lord gestured to the servant at his side. "Quickly, man. Quickly!"

"Lady Katsa," Giddon said as he and Oll turned toward the door, "why don't you stay here? Keep His Lordship company." The servant led Giddon and Oll from the room. The big doors swung shut behind them. Katsa and the lord were alone. She stared at him. His breath was shallow, his face pale. He didn't look at her. He seemed as if he were about to collapse.

"Sit down," Katsa said. He fell into his chair and let out a small moan.

"Look at me," she said. His eyes flicked to her face, and then slid to her hands. Randa's victims always watched her hands, never her face. They couldn't hold her eyes. And they expected a blow from her hands.

Katsa sighed.

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out but a croak.

"I can't hear you," Katsa said.

He cleared his throat. "I have a family. I have a family to care for. Do what you will, but I beg you not to kill me."

"You don't want me to kill you, for the sake of your family?"

A tear ran into his beard. "And for my own sake. I don't want to die."

Of course he didn't want to die, for three acres of wood. "I don't kill men who steal three acres of lumber from the king," she said, "and then pay for it dearly in gold. It's more the sort of crime that warrants a broken arm or the removal of a finger."

She moved toward him and pulled her dagger from its sheath. He breathed heavily, staring at the eggs and fruit on his plate. She wondered if he would vomit or begin to sob. But then he moved his plate to the side, and his overturned glass and his silver. He stretched his arms onto the table before him. He bent his head, and waited.

A wave of tiredness swept over her. It was easier to follow Randa's orders when they begged or cried, when they gave her nothing to respect. And Randa didn't care about his forests; he only cared about the money and the power. Besides, the forests would grow back one day. Fingers didn't grow back.

She slipped her dagger back into its sheath. It would be his arm, then, or his leg, or perhaps his collarbone, always a painful bone to break. But her own arms were as heavy as iron, and her legs didn't seem to want to propel her forward.

The lord drew one shaky breath, but he didn't move or speak. He was a liar and a thief and a fool.

Somehow she could not get herself to care.

Katsa sighed sharply. "I grant that you're brave," she said, "though you didn't seem it at first." She sprang to the table and struck him on the temple, just as she'd done with Murgon's guards. He slumped, and fell from his chair.

She turned and went to wait in his great stone hall for Giddon and Oll to return with the money.

He would wake with a headache, but no more. If Randa heard what she had done, he'd be furious.

But perhaps Randa wouldn't hear. Or perhaps she could accuse the lord of lying, to save face.

In which case, Randa would insist she return with proof in the future. A collection of shriveled fingers and toes. What that would do for her reputation...

It didn't matter. She didn't have the strength today to torture a person who didn't deserve it.

A small figure came tripping into the hall then. Katsa knew who she was even before she saw the girl's eyes, one yellow as the squash that grew in the north, and one brown as a patch of mud. This girl she would hurt; this girl she would torture if it would stop her from taking Katsa's thoughts.

Katsa caught the child's eyes and stared her down. The girl gasped and backed up a few steps, then turned and ran from the hall.

CHAPTER FIVE

They made good time, though Katsa chafed at their pace. "Katsa feels that to ride a horse at anything but breakneck speed is a waste of the horse," Giddon said.

"I only want to know if Raffin has learned anything from the Lienid grandfather."

"Don't worry, My Lady," Oll said. "We'll reach the court by evening tomorrow, as long as the weather holds."

The weather held through the day and into the night, but sometime before dawn, clouds blotted out the stars above their camp. In the morning they broke camp quickly and set out with some trepidation. Shortly thereafter, as they rode into the yard of the inn that kept their horses, raindrops plopped onto their arms and faces. They'd only just made it to the stables when the skies opened and water poured down. Rushing streams formed between the hills around them.

It became an argument.

"We can ride in the rain," Katsa said. They stood in the stables, the inn ten steps away but invisible through a wall of water.

"At the risk of the horses," Giddon said. "At the risk of catching our deaths. Don't be foolish, Katsa."

"It's only water," she said.

"Tell that to a drowning man," Giddon said. He glared down at her, and she glared back. A raindrop from a crack in the roof splashed onto her nose, and she wiped at it furiously.

"My Lady," Oll said. "My Lord."

Katsa took a deep breath, looked into his patient face, and prepared herself for disappointment.

"We don't know how long the storm will last," Oll said. "If it lasts a day, we'd best not be in it. There's no reason to ride in such weather – " He held up his hand as Katsa started to speak. "No reason we could give to the king without him thinking us mad. But perhaps it'll only last an hour. In which case, we'll only have lost an hour."

Katsa crossed her arms and forced herself to breathe. "It doesn't look like the kind of storm that lasts an hour."

"Then I'll inform the innkeeper we're in need of food," Oll said, "and rooms for the night."

The inn was some distance from any of the Middluns hill towns, but still, in summer, it had decent custom from merchants and travelers. It was a simple square structure, with kitchen and eating room below, and two floors of rooms above. Plain, but neat and serviceable. Katsa would have preferred no fuss to have been made over their presence. But of course the inn was unaccustomed to housing royalty, and the entire family threw itself into a dither in an attempt to make the king's niece, the king's underlord, and the king's captain comfortable. Against Katsa's protests a visiting merchant was moved from his room so that she might have the view from his window, a view invisible now but which she imagined could only be of the same hills they'd been looking at for days.

Katsa wanted to apologize to the merchant for uprooting him. She sent Oll to do so at the midday meal. When Oll directed the man's attention to Katsa's table, she raised her cup to him. He raised his cup back and nodded his head vigorously, his face white and his eyes wide as plates.

"When you send Oll to speak for you, you do seem so dreadfully superior, Your Ladyship," Giddon said, smiling around his mouthful of stew.

Katsa didn't answer. He knew perfectly well why she'd sent Oll. If the man was like most people, it would frighten him to be approached by the lady herself.

The child who served them was painfully shy. She spoke no words, just nodded or shook her head in response to their requests. Unlike most, she seemed unable to keep her eyes away from Katsa's face. Even when the handsome Lord Giddon addressed her, her eyes slid to Katsa's.

"The girl thinks I'll eat her," Katsa said.

"I think not," Oll said. "Her father's a friend to the Council. It's possible you're spoken of differently in this household than you are in others, My Lady."

"She'll still have heard the stories," Katsa said.

"Possibly" Oll said. "But I think she's fascinated by you." Giddon laughed. "You do fascinate, Katsa." When the girl came around again, he asked her name.

"Lanie," she whispered, and her eyes flicked to Katsa's once again.

"Do you see our Lady Katsa, Lanie?" Giddon asked. The girl nodded.

"Does she frighten you?" Giddon asked.

The girl bit her lip and didn't answer.

"She wouldn't hurt you," Giddon said. "Do you understand that? But if someone else were to hurt you, Lady Katsa would likely hurt that person."

Katsa put her fork down and looked at Giddon. She hadn't expected this kindness from him.

"Do you understand?" Giddon asked the girl.

The child nodded. She peeked at Katsa.

"Perhaps you'd like to shake hands," Giddon said.

The girl paused. Then she leaned and held her hand out to Katsa. Something welled up inside Katsa, something she couldn't quite name. A sort of sad gladness at this little creature who wanted to touch her. Katsa reached her hand out and took the child's thin fingers. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Lanie."

Lanie's eyes grew wide, and then she dropped Katsa's hand and ran to the kitchen. Oll and Giddon laughed.

Katsa turned to Giddon. "I'm very grateful."

"You do nothing to dispel your ogreish reputation," Giddon said. "You know that, Katsa. It's no wonder you haven't more friends."

How like him. It was just like him, to turn a kind gesture into one of his criticisms of her character. He loved nothing more than to point out her flaws. And he knew nothing of her, if he thought she desired friends.

Katsa attacked her meal and ignored their conversation.

The rain didn't stop. Giddon and Oll were content to sit in the main room and talk with the merchants and the innkeeper, but Katsa thought the inactivity would set her screaming. She went out to the stables, only to frighten a boy, little bigger than Lanie, who stood on a stool in one of the stalls and brushed down a horse. Her horse, she saw, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Katsa said. "I'm only looking for a space to practice my exercises."

The boy climbed from his stool and fled. Katsa threw her hands into the air. Well, at least she had the stable to herself now. She moved bales of hay, saddles, and rakes to clear a place across from the stalls and began a series of kicks and strikes. She twisted and flipped, conscious of the air, the floor, the walls around her, the horses. She focused on her imaginary opponents, and her mind calmed.

At dinner, Oll and Giddon had interesting news.

"King Murgon has announced a robbery," Oll said. "Three nights past."

"Has he?" Katsa took in Oll's face, and then Giddon's. They both had the look of a cat that's cornered a mouse. "And what does he say was robbed?"

"He says only that a grand treasure of the court was stolen," Oll said.

"Great skies," Katsa said. "And who's said to have robbed him of this treasure?"

"Some say it was a Graceling boy," Oll said, "some kind of hypnotist, who put the king's guards to sleep."

"Others talk about a Graceling man the size of a monster," Giddon said, "a fighter, who overcame the guards, one by one."

Giddon laughed outright, and Oll smiled into his supper. "What interesting news," Katsa said. And then, hoping she sounded innocent, "Did you hear anything else?"

"Their search was delayed for hours," Giddon said, "because at first they assumed someone at court was to blame. A visiting man who happened to be a Graceling fighter." He lowered his voice. "Can you believe it? What luck for us." Katsa kept her voice calm. "What did he say, this Graceling?"

"Apparently nothing helpful," Giddon said. "He claimed to know nothing of it."

"What did they do to him?"

"I've no idea," Giddon said. "He's a Graceling fighter. I doubt they were able to do much of anything."

"Who is he? Where is he from?"

"No one's said." Giddon elbowed her. "Katsa, come on – you're missing the point. It makes no difference who he is. They lost hours questioning this man. By the time they began to look elsewhere for the thieves, it was too late."

Katsa thought she knew, better than Giddon or Oll could, why Murgon had spent so much time grilling this particular Graceling. And also why he'd taken pains not to publicize from where the Graceling came. Murgon wanted no one to suspect that the stolen treasure was Tealiff, that he'd held Tealiff in his dungeons in the first place.

And why had the Lienid Graceling told Murgon nothing? Was he protecting her?

This cursed rain had to stop, so that they could return to court, and to Raffin.

Katsa drank, then lowered her cup to the table. "What a stroke of luck for the thieves."

Giddon grinned. "Indeed."

"And have you heard any other news?"

"The innkeeper's sister has a baby of three months," Oll said. "They had a scare the other morning. They thought one of its eyes had darkened, but it was only a trick of the light."

"Fascinating." Katsa poured gravy onto her meat.

"The Monsean queen is grieving terribly for GrandfatherTealiff," Giddon said. "A Monsean merchant spoke of it."

"I'd heard she wasn't eating," Katsa said. It seemed to her a foolish way to grieve.

"There's more," Giddon said. "She's closed herself and her daughter into her rooms. She permits no one but her handmaiden to enter, not even King Leck."

That seemed not only foolish but peculiar. "Is she allowing her daughter to eat?"

"The handmaiden brings them meals," Giddon said. "But they won't leave the rooms. Apparently the king is being very patient about it."

"It will pass," Oll said. "There's no saying what grief will do to a person. It will pass when her father is found."

The Council would keep the old man hidden, for his own safety, until they learned the reason for his kidnapping. But perhaps a message could be sent to the Monsean queen, to ease her strange grief? Katsa determined to consider it. She would bring it up with Giddon and Oll, when they could talk safely.

"She's Lienid," Giddon said. "They're known to be odd people."

"It seems very odd to me," Katsa said. She'd never felt grief, or if she had, she didn't remember. Her mother, Randa's sister, had died of a fever before Katsa's eyes had settled, the same fever that had taken Raffin's mother, Randa's queen. Her father, a northern Middluns borderlord, had been killed in a raid across the border. It had been a Westeran raid on a Nanderan village. It hadn't been his responsibility, but he'd taken up the defense of his neighbors, and gotten himself killed in the process. She hadn't even been of speaking age. She didn't remember him.

If her uncle died, she didn't think she would grieve. She glanced at Giddon. She wouldn't like to lose him, but she didn't think she would grieve his loss, either. Oll was different. She would grieve for Oll. And her ladyservant, Helda. And Raffin. Raffin's loss would hurt more than a finger sliced off, or an arm broken, or a knife in her side.

But she wouldn't close herself in her rooms. She would go out and find the one who had done it, and then she'd make that person feel pain as no one had ever felt pain before.

Giddon was speaking to her, and she wasn't listening. She shook herself. "What did you say?"

"I said, lady dreamer, that I believe the sky is clearing. We'll be able to set out at dawn, if you like."

They would reach court before nightfall. Katsa finished her meal quickly and ran to her room to pack her bags.

CHAPTER SIX

The sun was well on its way across the sky when their horses clattered onto the marble floor of Randa's inner courtyard. Around them on all sides, the white castle walls rose and stood brightly against the green marble of the floor. Balconied passageways lined the walls above, so that the people of the court could look down into the courtyard as they moved from one section of the castle to another and admire Randa's great garden of crawling vines and pink flowering trees. A statue of Randa stood in the center of the garden, a fountain of water flowing from one outstretched hand and a torch in the other. It was an attractive garden, if one did not dwell on the statue, and an attractive courtyard – but not a peaceful or private one, with the entire court roaming the passageways above.

This was not the only such courtyard in the castle, but it was the largest, and it was the entrance point for any important residents or visitors. The green floor was kept to such a shine that Katsa could see herself and her horse reflected in its surface. The white walls were made of a stone that sparkled, and they rose so high that she had to crane her neck to find the tops of the turrets above. It was very grand, very impressive. As Randa liked it.

The noise of their horses and their shouts brought people to the balconies, to see who had come. A steward came out to greet them. A moment later, Raffin came flying into the courtyard.

"You've arrived!"

Katsa grinned up at him. Then she looked closer – stood on her toes, for he was so very tall. She grabbed a handful of his hair.

"Raff, what've you done to yourself? Your hair is positively blue."

"I've been trying a new remedy for headache," he said, "to be massaged into the scalp. Yesterday I thought I felt a headache coming on, so I tried it. Apparently it turns fair hair lplue."

She smiled. "Did it cure the headache?"

"Well, if I had a headache, then it did, but I'm not convinced I had one to begin with. Do you have a headache?" he asked, hopefully. "Your hair's so dark; it wouldn't turn nearly as blue."

"I don't. I never do. What does the king think of your hair?"

Raffin smirked. "He's not speaking to me. He says it's appalling behavior for the son of the king. Until my hair is normal again I'm not his son."

Oll and Giddon greeted Raffin and handed their reins to a boy. They followed the king's steward into the castle, leaving Katsa and Raffin alone in the courtyard, near the garden and the splashing of Randa's fountain. Katsa lowered her voice and pretended to focus on the straps that tied her saddlebags to her horse. "Any news?"

"He hasn't woken," Raffin said. "Not once."

She was disappointed. She kept her voice low. "Have you heard of a Lienid noble Graced with fighting?"

"You saw him, did you?" Raffin said, and she swung her eyes to his face, surprised. "As you came into the courtyard? He's been lurking around. Hard to look that one in the eyes, eh? He's the son of the Lienid king."

He was here? She hadn't expected that. She focused on her saddlebags once more. "Ror's heir?"

"Great hills, no. He has six older brothers. His name is the silliest I've heard for the seventh heir to a throne. Prince Greening Grandemalion." Raffin smiled. "Have you ever heard the like?"

"Why is he here?"

"Ah," Raffin said. "It's quite interesting, really. He claims to be searching for his kidnapped grandfather."

Katsa looked up from her bags, into his laughing blue eyes. "You haven't – "

"Of course not. I've been waiting for you."

A boy came for her horse, and Raffin launched into a monologue about the visitors she'd missed while she was gone. Then a steward approached from one of the entrances.

"He'll be for you," Raffin said, "for I'm not my father's son at the moment, and he doesn't send stewards for me." He laughed, then left her. "I'm glad you're back," he called to her, and he disappeared through an archway.

The steward was one of Randa's dry, sniffy little men. "Lady Katsa," he said. "Welcome back. The king wishes to know if your business in the east was successful."

"You may tell him it was successful," Katsa said.

"Very good, My Lady. The king wishes you to dress for dinner."

Katsa narrowed her eyes at the steward. "Does the king wish anything else?"

"No, My Lady. Thank you, My Lady." The man bowed and scampered away from her gaze as quickly as possible.

Katsa lifted her bags onto her shoulder and sighed. When the king wished her to dress for dinner, it meant she was to wear a dress and arrange her hair and wear jewels in her ears and around her neck. It meant the king planned to sit her next to some underlord who wished a wife, though she was probably not the wife he had in mind. She would ease the poor man's fears quickly, and perhaps she could claim not to feel well enough to sit through the entire meal. She could claim a headache. She wished she could take Raffin's headache remedy and turn her hair blue. It would give her a respite from Randa's dinners.

Raffin appeared again, a floor above her, on the balconied passageway that ran past his workrooms. He leaned over the railing and called down to her. "Kat!"

"What is it?"

"You look lost. Have you forgotten the way to your rooms?"

"I'm stalling."

"How long will you be? I'd like to show you a couple of my new discoveries."

"I've been told to make myself pretty for dinner."

He grinned. "Well, in that case, you'll be ages."

His face dissolved into laughter, and she tore a button from one of her bags and hurled it at him. He squealed and dropped to the floor, and the button hit the wall right where he'd been standing. When he peeked back over the railing, she stood in the courtyard with her hands on her hips, grinning. "I missed on purpose," she said.

"Show-off! Come if you've time." He waved, and turned into his rooms.

And that's when the presence in the corner of Katsa's eye took shape.

He was standing a floor above her, to her left. He leaned his elbows on the railing, the neck of his shirt open, and watched her. The gold hoops in his ears, and the rings on his fingers. His hair dark. A tiny welt visible on his forehead, just beside his eye.

His eyes. Katsa had never seen such eyes. One was silver, and the other, gold. They glowed in his sun-darkened face, uneven, and strange. She was surprised that they hadn't shone in the darkness of their first meeting. They didn't seem human. She couldn't stop looking at them.

A steward of the court came to him then and spoke to him. He straightened, turned to the man, and said something in response. When the steward walked away, the Lienid's eyes flashed back to Katsa's. He leaned his elbows on the railing again.

Katsa knew she was standing in the courtyard's center, staring at this Lienid. She knew she should move, but she found that she couldn't.

Then he raised his eyebrows a hair, and his mouth shifted into the hint of a smirk. He nodded at her, just barely, and it released her from her spell.

Cocky, she thought. Cocky and arrogant, this one, and that was all there was to make of him. Whatever game he was playing, if he expected her to join him he would be disappointed. Greening Grandemalion, indeed.

She tore her eyes away from his, hitched her bags higher, and pushed herself forward into the castle, all the while conscious of the strange eyes burning into her back.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Helda had come to work in Randa's nurseries around the same time Katsa began to dole out Randa's punishments. It was hard to know why she'd been less frightened of Katsa than others were. Perhaps it was because she had borne a Graceling child of her own. Not a fighter, only a swimmer, a skill that was of no use to the king. So the boy had been sent home, and Helda had seen how the neighbors avoided and ridiculed him simply because he could move through the water like a fish. Or because he had one eye black, and the other blue. Perhaps this was why when the servants had warned Helda to avoid the king's niece, Helda had reserved her opinion.

Of course, Katsa had been too old for the nurseries when Helda arrived, and the children of the court had kept Helda busy. But she'd come to Katsa's training sessions, when she could. She'd sat and watched the child beat the stuffing out of a dummy, grain bursting from cracks and tears in the sack and slapping onto the floor like spurting blood. She'd never stayed long, because she always needed to return to the nursery, but still Katsa had noticed her, as she noticed anyone who didn't try to avoid her. Had noticed and noted her, but hadn't troubled herself with curiosity. Katsa had had no reason to interact with a woman servant.

But one day Helda had come when Oll was away and Katsa was alone in the practice rooms. And when the child had paused to set up a new dummy, Helda had spoken.

"In court they say you're dangerous, My Lady."

Katsa considered the old woman for a moment, her gray hair and gray eyes, and her soft arms, folded over a soft stomach. The woman held her gaze, as no one other than Raffin, Oll, or the king did. Then Katsa shrugged, hoisted a sack of grain onto her shoulder, and hung it from a hook on a wooden post standing in the center of the practice-room floor.

"The first man you killed, My Lady," Helda said. "That cousin. Did you mean to kill him?"

It was a question no one had ever actually asked her. Again the girl looked into the face of the woman, and again the woman held her eyes. Katsa sensed that this question was inappropriate coming from a servant. But she was so unused to being talked to that she didn't know the right way to proceed.

"No," Katsa said. "I only meant to keep him from touching me."

"Then you are dangerous, My Lady, to people you don't like. But perhaps you'd be safe as a friend."

"It's why I spend my days in this practice room," Katsa said.

"Mastering your Grace," Helda said. "Yes, all Gracelings must do so."

This woman knew something about the Graces, and she wasn't afraid to say the word. It was time for Katsa to begin her exercises again, but she paused, hoping the woman would say something more.

"My Lady," HeIda said, "if I may ask you a nosy question?" Katsa waited. She couldn't think of a question more nosy than the one the woman had already asked.

"Who are your servants, My Lady?" Helda asked.

Katsa wondered if this woman was trying to embarrass her. She drew herself up and looked the woman straight in the face, daring her to laugh or smile. "I don't keep servants. When a servant is assigned to me, she generally chooses to leave the service of the court."

Helda didn't smile or laugh. She merely looked back at Katsa, studied her for a moment. "Have you any female caretakers, My Lady?"

"I have none."

"Has anyone spoken to you of a woman's bleedings, My Lady, or of how it is with a man and a woman?"

Katsa didn't know what she meant, and she had a feeling this old woman could tell. Still, Helda didn't smile or laugh. She looked Katsa up and down.

"What's your age, My Lady?"

Katsa raised her chin. "I'm nearly eleven."

"And they were going to let you learn it on your own," Helda said, "and probably tear through the castle like a wild thing because you didn't know what attacked you."

Katsa raised her chin another notch. "I always know what attacks me."

"My child," Helda said, "My Lady, would you allow me to serve you, on occasion? When you need service, and when my presence is not required in the nurseries?"

Katsa thought it must be very bad to work in the nurseries, if this woman wished to serve her instead. "I don't need servants," she said, "but I can have you transferred from the nurseries if you're unhappy there."

Katsa thought she caught the hint of a smile. "I'm happy in the nurseries," Helda said. "Forgive me for contradicting such a one as yourself, My Lady, but you do need a servant, a woman servant. Because you have no mother or sisters."

Katsa had never needed a mother or sisters or anyone else, either. She didn't know what one did with a contradictory servant; she guessed that Randa would go into a rage, but she was afraid of her own rages. She held her breath, clenched her fists, and stood as still as the wooden post in the center of the room. The woman could say what she wanted. They were only words.

Helda stood and smoothed her dress. "I'll come to your rooms on occasion, My Lady."

Katsa made her face like a rock.

"If you ever wish a break from your uncle's state dinners, you may always join me in my room."

Katsa blinked. She hated the dinners, with everyone's sideways glances, and the people who didn't want to sit near her, and her uncle's loud voice. Could she really skip them? Could this woman's company be better?

"I must return to the nurseries, My Lady," Helda said. "My name is Helda, and I come from the western Middluns. Your eyes are so very pretty, my dear. Good-bye."

Helda left before Katsa was able to find her voice. Katsa stared at the door that closed behind her.

"Thank you," she said, though there was no one to hear, and though she wasn't sure why her voice seemed to think she was grateful.

Katsa sat in the bath and tugged at the knots in her tangle of hair. She heard Helda in the other room, rustling through the chests and drawers, unearthing the earrings and necklaces Katsa had thrown among her silk undergarments and her horrid bone chest supports the last time she'd been required to wear them. Katsa heard Helda muttering and grunting, on her knees most likely, looking under the bed for Katsa's hairbrush or her dinner shoes.

"What dress shall it be tonight, My Lady?" Helda called out.

"You know I don't care," Katsa called back.

There was more muttering in response to this. A moment later Helda came to the door carrying a dress bright as the tomatoes Randa imported from Lienid, the tomatoes that clustered on the vine and tasted as rich and sweet as his chef's chocolate cake. Katsa raised her eyebrows.

"I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said.

"It's the color of sunrise," Helda said.

"It's the color of blood," Katsa said.

Sighing, Helda carried the dress from the bathing room. "It would look stunning, My Lady," she called, "with your dark hair and your eyes."

Katsa yanked at one of the more stubborn knots in her hair. She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face."

Helda came to the doorway again, this time with her arms full of a soft green silk. "Is this dull enough for you, My Lady?"

"Have I no grays or browns?"

Helda set her face. "I'm determined that you wear a color, My Lady."

Katsa scowled. "You're determined that people notice me." She held a tangle of hair before her eyes and pulled at it, savagely. "I should like to cut it all off," she said. "It's not worth the nuisance."

Helda put the dress aside and came to sit on the edge of the bath. She lathered her fingers up with soap, and took the tangled hair out of Katsa's hands. She worked the curls apart, bit by bit, gently.

"If you ran a brush through it once every day while you were traveling, My Lady, this wouldn't happen."

Katsa snorted. "Giddon would get a good laugh out of that. My attempts to beautify myself."

That knot untangled, Helda moved to another. "Don't you think Lord Giddon finds you beautiful, My Lady?"

"Helda," Katsa said, "how much time do you suppose I spend wondering which of the gentlemen finds me beautiful?"

"Not enough," Helda said, nodding emphatically. A hiccup of laughter rose into Katsa's throat. Dear Helda. She saw what Katsa was and what she did, and Helda didn't deny that Katsa was that person. But she couldn't fathom a lady who didn't want to be beautiful, who didn't want a legion of admirers. And so she believed Katsa was both people, though Katsa couldn't imagine how she reconciled them in her mind.

In the great dining hall, Randa presided over a long, high table that might as well have been a stage at the head of the room. Three low tables were arranged around the perimeter to complete the sides of a square, giving the guests an unobstructed view of the king.

Randa was a tall man, taller even than his son, and broader in the shoulders and the neck. He had Raffin's yellow hair and blue eyes, but they weren't laughing eyes like Raffin's. They were eyes that assumed you would do what he told you to do, eyes that threatened to bring you unhappiness if he didn't get what he wanted. It wasn't that he was unjust, except perhaps to those who wronged him. It was more that he wanted things the way he wanted them, and if things weren't that way, he might decide that he'd been wronged. And if you were the person responsible – well, then you had reason to fear his eyes.

At dinner he wasn't fearsome. At dinner he was arrogant and loud. He brought whomever he wanted to sit with him at the high table. Often Raffin, though Randa spoke over him and never cared to hear what he had to say. Rarely Katsa. Randa kept his distance from her. He preferred to look down on his lady killer and call out to her, because his yelling brought the attention of the entire room to his niece, his prized weapon. And the guests would be frightened, and everything would be as Randa liked it.

Tonight she sat at the table to the right of Randa's, her usual position. She wore the soft green silk and fought the urge to tear off the sleeves that widened at her wrists and hung over her hands and dragged across her plate if she wasn't careful. At least this dress covered her breasts, mostly. Not all of them did. Helda paid her no attention when she gave instructions about her wardrobe.

Giddon sat to her left. The lord to her right, whom she supposed to be the eligible bachelor, was a man not old, but older than Giddon, a small man whose bugged eyes and stretched mouth gave him the appearance of a frog. His name was Davit, and he was a borderlord from the Middluns' northeast corner, at the border of both Nander and Estill.

His conversation wasn't bad; he cared a great deal about his land, his farms, his villages, and Katsa found it easy to ask questions that he was eager to answer. At first he sat on the farthest edge of his chair and looked at her shoulder and her ear and her hair as they talked, but never her face. But he grew calmer as the dinner progressed and Katsa didn't bite him; his body relaxed, he settled into his chair, and they spoke easily. Katsa thought him unusually good dinner company, this Lord Davit of the northeast. At any rate, he made it easier for her to resist tearing out the hairpins that dug into her scalp.

The Lienid prince was also a distraction, no matter how much she willed him not to be. He sat across the room from her and was always in the corner of her eye, though she tried not to look at him directly. She felt his eyes on her at times. Bold, he was, and entirely unlike the rest of the guests, who carefully pretended she wasn't there, as they always did. It occurred to her that it wasn't just the strangeness of his eyes that disconcerted her. It was that he wasn't afraid to hold hers. She glanced at him once when he wasn't looking. He raised his eyes to meet her gaze. Davit had asked the same question twice before Katsa heard him and turned from the Lienid's uneven stare to answer.

She supposed she would have to face those eyes soon. They would have to talk; she would have to decide what to do with him.

She thought that Lord Davit would be less nervous if he knew there was no chance of Randa offering him her suit. "Lord Davit," she said, "have you a wife?"

He shook his head. "It's the only thing my estate lacks, My Lady."

Katsa kept her eyes on her venison and carrots. "My uncle is very disappointed in me, because I intend never to marry."

Lord Davit paused, and then spoke. "I doubt your uncle is the only man who finds that disappointing."

Katsa considered his pointy face, and could not stop herself from smiling. "Lord Davit," she said, "you're a perfect gentleman."

The lord smiled in return. "You think I didn't mean it, My Lady, but I did." Then he leaned in and ducked his head. "My Lady," he whispered, "I wish to speak with the Council."

The voices of the dinner guests were lively, but she heard him perfectly. She pretended to focus on her dinner. She stirred her soup. "Sit back," she said. "Act as if we were only talking. Don't whisper, for it draws attention."

The lord settled back into his seat. He raised his finger for a serving girl, who brought him more wine. He ate a few bites of his venison and turned to Katsa once more.

"The weather has been very kind to my aging father this summer, My Lady," he said. "He suffers in the heat, but it's been cool in the northeast."

"I'm happy to hear it," Katsa said. "Is it information, or a request?"

The lord spoke around his mouthful of carrots. "Information." He sliced another piece of venison. "It becomes more and more difficult to care for him, My Lady."

"Why is that?"

"The elderly are prone to discomforts. It's our duty to keep them comfortable," he said, "and safe."

Katsa nodded. "True words, indeed." She kept her face even, but excitement rattled at the edges of her mind. If he had information about the kidnapping of the Lienid grandfather, they would all want to hear it. She reached under the heavy tablecloth and rested her hand on Giddon's knee. He leaned toward her slightly, without turning away from the lady on his other side.

"You're a man of great information, Lord Davit," she said to the lord, or rather, to her plate, so that Giddon could hear. "I hope we'll have the opportunity to speak with you more during your stay at court."

"Thank you, My Lady," Lord Davit said. "I hope so, too."

Giddon would spread the word. They would meet that night, in her own rooms – because they were secluded and because they were the only rooms not traveled by servants. If she could, she'd find Raffin beforehand. She'd like to visit Grandfather Tealiff. Even if he was still sleeping, it would be good to see with her own eyes how he was faring.

Katsa heard the king speak her name, and her shoulders stiffened. She didn't look at him, for she didn't wish to encourage him to draw her into his conversation. She couldn't make out his words; most likely he was telling some guest the story of something she'd done. His laughter rolled across the tables in the great marble hall. Katsa tried to push back the scowl that rose to her face.

The Lienid prince was watching her. She felt that, too. Heat licked at her neck and crawled along her scalp. "My Lady," Lord Davit said, "are you quite all right? You look a bit flushed."

Giddon turned to her then, his face flashing with concern. He reached for her arm. "You aren't ill?"

She pulled back, away from him. "I'm never ill," she snarled, and she knew suddenly that she must leave the hall. She must leave the clatter of voices and the sound of her uncle's laugh, Giddon's smothering concern, the Lienid's burning eyes; she must get outside, find Raffin, or be on her own. She must, or she would lose her temper, and something unthinkable would happen.

She stood, and Giddon and Lord Davit stood with her. Across the room the Lienid prince stood. One by one, the rest of the men saw her standing, and rose. The room quieted, and everyone was looking at her.

"What is it, Katsa?" Giddon asked, reaching for her arm again. So that he wouldn't be shamed before everyone in the hall, she allowed him to take it, though his hand was like a brand that burned into her skin.

"It's nothing," she said. "I'm sorry." She turned to the king, the only man in the room who wasn't on his feet. "Forgive me, Lord King," she said. "It's nothing. Please, sit down." She waved her hand around the tables. "Please."

Slowly, the gentlemen sat, and the voices picked up again. The king's laugh rang out, directed at her, she was sure. Katsa turned to Lord Davit. "Please excuse me, My Lord." She turned to Giddon, whose hand still grasped her elbow. "Let go, Giddon. I want to take a walk outside."

"I'll go with you," he said. He started to rise, but at the warning in her eyes he sat back again. "Very well, Katsa, do what you will."

There was an edge to his voice. She had probably been rude, but she didn't care. All that mattered was that she leave this room and go to a place where she couldn't hear the drone of her uncle's voice. She turned, careful not to catch the eyes of the Lienid. She forced herself to walk slowly, calmly, to the doorway at the foot of the room. Once through the doorway, she ran.

She ran through corridors, around corners, past servants who flattened themselves trembling against walls as she flew by. Finally she burst into the darkness of the courtyard.

She crossed the marble floor, pulling pins from her hair. She sighed as her curls fell around her shoulders and the tension left her scalp. It was the hairpins, and the dress, and the shoes that pinched her feet. It was having to hold her head still and sit straight, it was the infuriating earrings that brushed against her neck. That was why she couldn't stand to spend one moment longer at her uncle's fine dinner. She took off her earrings and hurled them into her uncle's fountain. She didn't care who found them.

But that was no good, because then people would talk. The entire court would speculate about what it meant, that she'd thrown her earrings into her uncle's fountain.

Katsa kicked off her shoes, hitched up her skirt, and climbed into the fountain, sighing as the cold water ran between her toes and lapped at her ankles. It was a great improvement over her shoes. She would not put them on again tonight.

She waded out to the glimmers she saw in the water and retrieved her earrings. She dried them on her skirt, dropped them into the bodice of her dress for safekeeping, and stood in the fountain, enjoying the coolness enveloping her feet, the drifting air of the courtyard, the night noises – until a sound from inside reminded her of how much the court would talk if she were found wading, barefoot and wild haired, in King Randa's fountain. They would think her mad.

And perhaps she was mad.

A light shone from Raffin's workrooms, but it wasn't his company she sought after all. She didn't want to sit and talk. She wanted to move. Movement would stop the whirring of her mind.

Katsa climbed out of the fountain and hung the straps of her shoes over her wrists. She ran.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The archery range was empty, and dark except for the lone torch that glowed outside the equipment room. Katsa lit the torches along the back of the range so that when she returned to the front, the man-shaped dummies stood black against the brightness behind them. She grabbed a bow randomly from the supplies and collected handfuls of the lightest-colored arrows she could find. Then she drove arrow after arrow into the knees of her targets. Then the thighs, then the elbows, then the shoulders, until she'd emptied her quiver. She could disarm or disable any man with this bow at night, that was clear enough. She exchanged the bow for another. She yanked the arrows from the targets. She began again.

She'd lost her temper at dinner, and for no reason. Randa hadn't spoken to her, hadn't even looked at her, had only said her name. He loved to brag of her, as if her great ability were his doing. As if she were the arrow, and he the archer whose skill drove her home. No, not an arrow – that didn't quite capture it. A dog. To Randa she was a savage dog he'd broken and trained. He set her on his enemies and allowed her out of her cage to be groomed and kept pretty, to sit among his friends and make them nervous.

Katsa didn't notice her heightened speed and focus, the ferocity with which she was now whipping arrows from her quiver, the next arrow notched in the string before the first had hit home. Not until she sensed the presence behind her shoulder did she stir from her preoccupation and realize how she must look.

She was savage. Look at her speed, look at her accuracy, and with a poor bow, curved badly, strung badly. No wonder Randa treated her so.

She knew it was the Lienid who stood behind her. She ignored him. But she slowed her movements, made a show of taking aim at thighs and knees before she fired. She became conscious of the dirt under her feet and remembered, too, that she was barefoot, with her hair falling around her shoulders and her shoes in a pile somewhere near the equipment room. He would have noticed. She doubted there was much those eyes didn't notice. Well, he wouldn't have kept such stupid shoes on his feet, either, or left pins in his hair if his scalp were screaming. Or perhaps he would. He seemed not to mind his own fine jewelry, in his ears and on his fingers. They must be a vain people, the Lienid.

"Can you kill with an arrow? Or do you only ever wound?"

She remembered his raspy voice from Murgon's courtyard, and it was taunting her now, as it had done then. She didn't turn to him. She simply took two arrows from her quiver, notched them together, pulled, and released. One flew to her target's head, and the other to its chest. They hit with a satisfying thud, and glowed palely in the flickering torchlight.

"I'll never make the mistake of challenging you to an archery match."

There was laughter in his voice. She kept her back to him and reached for another arrow. "You didn't forfeit our last match so easily," she said.

"Ah, but that's because I have your fighting skill. I lack your skill with a bow and arrow."

Katsa couldn't help herself She found that interesting. She turned her eyes to him, his face in shadows. "Is that true?"

"My Grace gives me skill at hand-to-hand combat," he said, "or sword-to-sword. It does little for my archery."

He leaned back against the great slab of stone that served as a table for the equipment of the archers. His arms were crossed. She was becoming accustomed to this look, this lazy look, as if he could nod off to sleep at any moment, but it didn't fool her. She thought if she were to spring at him, he'd react quickly enough.

"Then, you need to be able to grapple with your opponent, to have an advantage," she said.

He nodded. "I may be quicker to dodge arrows than someone Ungraced. But in my own attack, my skill is only as good as my aim."

"Hmm." Katsa believed him. The Graces were odd like that; they didn't touch any two people in quite the same way.

"Can you throw a knife as well as you shoot an arrow?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You're unbeatable, Lady Katsa." She heard the laughter in his voice again. She considered him for a moment and then turned away and walked down the course to the targets. She stopped at one, the one she'd "killed," and yanked the arrows from its thighs, its chest, its head.

He sought his grandfather, and Katsa had what he sought. But he didn't feel safe to her, this one. He didn't feel quite trustworthy.

She walked from target to target, pulling out arrows. He watched her, she felt it, and the knowledge of his eyes on her back drove her to the back of the range, where she put the torches out, one by one. As she extinguished the last flame, darkness enveloped her, and she knew she was invisible.

She turned to him then, thinking to examine him in the light of the equipment room without his knowing. But he slouched, arms crossed, and stared straight at her. He couldn't see her, it wasn't possible – but his gaze was so direct that she couldn't hold it, even knowing he didn't know she stared.

She walked across the range and stepped into the light, and his eyes seemed to change focus. He smiled at her, ever so slightly. The torch caught the gold of one eye and the silver of the other. They were like the eyes of a cat, or a night creature of some kind.

"Does your Grace give you night vision?" she asked.

He laughed. "Hardly. Why do you ask?"

She didn't answer. They looked at each other for a moment. The flush began to rise into her neck again, and with it, a surging irritation. She'd grown far too used to people avoiding her eyes. He would not rattle her so, simply by looking at her. She wouldn't allow it.

"I'm going to return to my rooms now," she said.

He straightened. "Lady, I have questions for you."

Well, and she knew they must have this conversation eventually, and she preferred to have it in the dark, where his eyes wouldn't unnerve her. Katsa pulled the quiver over her head, and laid it on the slab of stone. She placed the bow beside it.

"Go on," she said.

He leaned back against the stone. "What did you steal from King Murgon, Lady," he said, "four nights past?"

"Nothing that King Murgon had not himself stolen."

"Ah. Stolen from you?"

"Yes, from me, or from a friend."

"Really?" He crossed his arms again, and in the torchlight he raised an eyebrow. "I wonder if this friend would be surprised to hear himself so called?"

"Why should he be surprised? Why should he think himself an enemy?"

"Ah," he said, "but it's just that. I thought the Middluns had neither friends nor enemies. I thought King Randa never got involved."

"I suppose you're wrong."

"No. I'm not wrong." He stared at her, and she was glad for the darkness that kept his strange eyes dim. "Do you know why I'm here, Lady?"

"I was told you're the son of the Lienid king," she said. "I was told you seek your grandfather, who's disappeared. Why you've come to Randa's court, I couldn't say. I doubt Randa is your kidnapper."

He considered her for a moment, and a smile flickered across his face. Katsa knew she wasn't fooling him. It didn't matter. He may know what he knew, but she had no intention of confirming it.

"King Murgon was quite certain I was involved in the robbery," he said. "He seemed quite sure I knew what object had been stolen."

"And that's natural," Katsa said. "The guards had seen a fighter, and you're no other than a fighter."

"No. Murgon didn't believe I was involved because I was Graced. He believed I was involved because I'm Lienid. Can you explain that?"

And of course she would give him no answer to that question, this smirking Lienid. She noticed that the neck of his shirt was now fastened. "I see you close your shirt for state dinners," she heard herself saying, though she didn't know where such a senseless comment came from.

His mouth twitched, and his words, when he spoke, did not conceal his laughter. "I didn't know you were so interested in my shirt, Lady."

Her face was hot, and his laughter was infuriating. This was absurdity, and she would put up with it no longer. "I'm going to my rooms now," she said, and she turned to leave. In a flash, he stood and blocked her path.

"You have my grandfather," he said.

Katsa tried to step around him. "I'm going to my rooms." He blocked her path again, and this time he raised his arm in warning.

Well, at least they were relating now in a way she could understand. Katsa cocked her head upward and looked into his eyes. "I'm going to my rooms," she said, "an if I must knock you over to do so, I will."

"I won't allow you to go," he said, "until you tell me where my grandfather is."

She moved again to pass him, and he moved to block her, and it was almost with relief that she struck out at his face. It was just a feint, and when he ducked she jammed at his stomach with her knee, but he twisted so that the blow didn't fall true, and came back with a fist to her stomach. She took the blow, just to see how well he hit, and then wished she hadn't. This wasn't one of the king's soldiers, whose blows hardly touched her, even with ten of them on her at once. This one could knock the wind out of her. This one could fight, and so a fight was what she would give him.

She jumped and kicked at his chest. He crashed to the ground and she threw herself on top of him, struck him in the face once, twice, three times, and kneed him in the side before he was able to throw her off. She was on him again like a wildcat, but as she tried to trap his arms he flipped her onto her back and pinned her with the weight of his body. She curled her legs up and heaved him away, and then they were on their feet again, crouching, circling, striking at each other with hands and feet. She kicked at his stomach and barreled into his chest, and they were on the ground again.

Katsa didn't know how long they'd been grappling when she realized he was laughing. She understood his joy, understood it completely. She'd never had such a fight, she'd never had such an opponent. She was faster than he was offensively – much faster – but he was stronger, and it was as if he had a premonition of her every turn and strike; she'd never known a fighter so quick to defend himself. She was calling up moves she hadn't tried since she was a child, blows she'd only ever imagined having the opportunity to use. They were playing. It was a game. When he pinned her arms behind her back, grabbed her hair, and pushed her face into the dirt, she found that she was laughing as well.

"Surrender," he said.

"Never." She kicked her feet up at him and squirmed her arms out of his grasp. She elbowed him in the face, and when he jumped to avoid the blow, she flew at him and flattened him to the ground. She pinned his arms as he had just done, and pushed his face into the dirt. She dug one knee into the small of his back.

"You surrender," she said, "for you're beaten."

"I'm not beaten, and you know it. You'll have to break my arms and legs to beat me."

"And I will," she said, "if you don't surrender." But there was a smile in her voice, and he laughed.

"Katsa," he said, "Lady Katsa. I'll surrender, on one condition."

"And the condition?"

"Please," he said. "Please, tell me what's happened to my grandfather."

There was something mixed in with the laughter in his voice, something that caught at Katsa's throat. She didn't have a grandfather. But perhaps this grandfather meant to the Lienid prince what Oll – or Helda or Raffin – meant to her.

"Katsa," he said into the dirt. "I beg you to trust me, as I've trusted you."

She held him down for just a moment, and then she let his arms go. She slid from his back and sat in the dirt beside him. She rested her chin in her palm, considering him.

"Why do you trust me," she said, "when I left you lying on the floor of Murgon's courtyard?"

He rolled over and sat up, groaning. He massaged his shoulder. "Because I woke up. You could've killed me, but you didn't." He touched his cheekbone and winced. "Your face is bleeding." He stretched out his hand to her jaw, but she waved it aside and stood.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Come with me, Prince Greening."

He heaved himself to his feet. "It's Po."

"Po?"

"My name. It's Po."

Katsa watched him for a moment as he swung his arms and tested out his shoulder joints. He pressed his side and groaned. His eye was swelling, and blackening, she thought, though it was hard to tell in the darkness. His sleeve was torn,and he was covered with dirt, absolutely smeared from head to foot. She knew she looked the same – worse, really, with her messy hair and bare feet – but it only made her smile.

"Come with me, Po," she said. "I'll take you to your grandfather."

CHAPTER NINE

When they walked into the light of Raffin's workrooms, his blue head was bent over a bubbling flask. He added leaves to the flask from a potted plant at his elbow. He watched the leaves dissolve and muttered something at the result.

Katsa cleared her throat. Raffin looked up at them and blinked.

"I take it you've been getting to know each other," he said. "It must've been a friendly fight, if you come to me together."

"Are you alone?" Katsa asked.

"Yes, except for Bann, of course."

"I've told the prince about his grandfather."

Raffin looked from Katsa to Po and back to Katsa again. He raised his eyebrows.

"He's safe," Katsa said. "I'm sorry for not consulting you, Raff."

"Kat," Raffin said, "if you think he's safe even after he's bloodied your face and" – he glanced at her tattered dress – "rolled you around in a puddle of mud, then I believe you."

Katsa smiled. "May we see him?"

"You may," Raffin said. "And I have good news. He's awake."

Randa's castle was full of secret inner passageways; it had been that way since its construction so many generations before. They were so plentiful that even Randa didn't know of all of them – no one did, really, although Raffin had had the mind as a child to notice when two rooms came together in a way that seemed not to match. Katsa and Raffin had done a fair bit of exploring as children, Katsa keeping guard, so that anyone who came upon one of Raffin's investigations would scuttle away at the sight of her small, glaring form. Raffin and Katsa had chosen their living quarters because a passageway connected them, and because another passageway connected Raffin to the science libraries.

Some of the passageways were secret, and some were known by the entire court. The one in Raffin's workrooms was secret. It led from the inside of a storage room in a back alcove, up a stairway, and to a small room set between two floors of the castle. It was a windowless room, dark and musty, but it was the only place in the castle that they could be sure no one would find, and that Raffin and Bann could stay so near to most of the time.

Bann was Raffin's friend of many years, a young man who had worked in the libraries as a boy. One day Raffin had stumbled across him, and the two children had fallen to talking about herbs and medicines and about what happened when you mixed the ground root of one plant with the powdered flower of another. Katsa had been amazed that there could be more than one person in the Middluns who found such things interesting enough to talk about – and relieved that Raffin had found someone other than her to bore. Shortly thereafter, Raffin had begged Bann's help with a particular experiment, and from that time on had effectively stolen Bann for himself. Bann was Raffin's assistant in all things.

Raffin ushered Katsa and Po through the door in the back of the storage room, a torch in his hand. They slipped up the steps that led to the secret chamber.

"Has he said anything?" Katsa asked.

"Nothing," said Raffin, "other than that they blindfolded him when they took him. He's still very weak. He doesn't seem to remember much."

"Do you know who took him?" Po said. "Was Murgon responsible?"

"We don't think so," Katsa said, "but all we know for sure is that it wasn't Randa."

The stairs ended at a doorway. Raffin fiddled with a key. "Linda doesn't know he's here," Po said. It was more of a statement than a question.

"Randa doesn't know," Katsa said. "He must never know."

Raffin opened the door then, and they crowded into the tiny room. Bann sat in a chair beside a narrow bed, reading in the dim light of a lamp on the table beside him. Prince Tealiff lay on his back in the bed, his eyes closed and his hands clasped over his chest.

Upon their entrance, Bann stood. He seemed unsurprised as Po rushed forward; he only stepped aside and offered his chair. Po sat and leaned toward his grandfather, looked into his sleeping face. Simply looked at him, and did not touch him. Then Po took the man's hands and bent his forehead to them, exhaling slowly.

Katsa felt as if she were intruding on something private. She dropped her eyes until Po sat up again.

"Your face is turning purple, Prince Greening," Raffin said. "You're on your way to a very black eye."

"Po," he said. "Call me Po."

"Po. I'll get you some ice from the vault. Come, Bann, let's get some supplies for our two warriors."

Raffin and Bann slipped through the doorway. And when Katsa and Po turned back to Tealiff, the old man's eyes were open.

"Grandfather," Po said.

"Po?" His voice rasped with the effort of speaking. "Po." He struggled to clear his throat and then lay still for a moment, exhausted. "Great seas, boy. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see you."

"I've been tracking you down, Grandfather," Po said.

"Move that lamp closer, boy," Tealiff said. "What in the name of Lienid have you done to your face?"

"It's nothing, Grandfather. I've only been fighting."

"With what, a pack of wolves?"

"With the Lady Katsa," Po said. He cocked his head at Katsa, who stood at the foot of the bed. "Don't worry, Grandfather. It was only a friendly scuffle."

Tealiff snorted. "A friendly scuffle. You look worse than she does, Po."

Po burst into laughter. He laughed a lot, this Lienid prince. "I've met my match, Grandfather."

"More than your match," Tealiff said, "it looks to me. Come here, child," he said to Katsa. "Come to the light."

Katsa approached the other side of the bed and knelt beside him. Tealiff turned to her, and she became suddenly conscious of her dirty, bloody face, her tangled hair. How dreadful she must look to this old man.

"My dear," he said. "I believe you saved my life."

"Lord Prince," Katsa said, "if anyone did that, it was my cousin Raffin with his medicines."

"Yes, Raffin's a good boy," he said. He patted her hand. "But I know what you did, you and the others. You've saved my life, though I can't think why. I doubt any Lienid has ever done you a kindness."

"I'd never met a Lienid," Katsa said, "before you, Lord Prince. But you seem very kind."

Tealiff closed his eyes. He seemed to sink into his pillows. His breath was a drawn-out sigh.

"He falls asleep like that," Raffin said from the doorway. "His strength will come back, with rest." He carried something wrapped in a cloth, which he handed to Po. "Ice. Hold it to that eye. It looks like she's cracked your lip, too. Where else does it hurt?"

"Everywhere," Po said. "I feel as if I've been run over by a team of horses."

"Honestly, Katsa," Raffin said. "Were you trying to kill him?"

"If I'd been trying to kill him, he'd be dead," Katsa said, and Po laughed again. "He wouldn't be laughing," she added, "if it were that bad."

It wasn't that bad; or at least Raffin was able to determine that none of his bones were broken and that he'd sustained no bruises that wouldn't heal. Then Raffin turned to Katsa. He examined the scratch that stretched across her jaw, and wiped dirt and blood from her face.

"It's not very deep, this scratch," he said. "Any other pains?"

"None," she said. "I don't even feel the scratch."

"I suppose you'll have to retire this dress," he said. "Helda will give you a terrible scolding."

"Yes, I'm devastated about the dress."

Raffin smiled. He took hold of her arms and held her out from him so that he could look her up and down. He laughed.

"What can be so funny," Katsa said, "to a prince who's turned his hair blue?"

"You look like you've been in a fight," he said, "for the first time in your life."

Katsa had five rooms. Her sleeping room, decorated with dark draperies and wall hangings that Helda had chosen because Katsa had refused to form an opinion on the matter. Her bathing room, white marble, large and cold, functional. Her dining room, with windows looking onto the courtyard, and a small table where she ate, sometimes with Raffin or Helda, or with Giddon when he wasn't driving her to distraction. Her sitting room, full of soft chairs and pillows that Helda, again, had chosen. She didn't use the sitting room.

The fifth room used to be her workroom, but she couldn't remember the last time she'd embroidered or crocheted, or darned a stocking. She couldn't remember the last time she'd worn a stocking, truth be told. She'd turned the room into a place for the storage of her weapons: swords, daggers, knives, bows, and staffs lined the walls. She'd fitted the room with a solid, square table, and now the Council meetings were held there.

Katsa bathed for the second time that day and knotted her wet hair behind her head. She fed her dress to the sleeping-room fire and watched its smoky demise with great satisfaction. A boy arrived who was to keep watch during the Council meeting. Katsa went into the weapons room and lit the torches that hung on the walls between her knives and bows.

Raffin and Po were the first to arrive. Po's hair was damp from his own bath. The skin had blackened around his eye, the gold eye, and made his gaze even more rakish and uneven than it had been before. He slouched against the table with his hands in his pockets. His eyes flashed around the room, taking in Katsa's collection of weapons. Po was wearing a new shirt, open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. His forearms were as sun darkened as his face. She didn't know why she should notice. She found herself frowning.

"Sit, Your High Majestic Lord Princes," she said. She yanked a chair from the table and sat down herself.

"You're in fine temper," Raffin said.

"Your hair is blue," Katsa snapped back.

Oll strode into the room. At the sight of the scratch on Katsa's face, his mouth dropped open. He turned to Po and saw the black eye. He turned back to Katsa. He began to chuckle. He slapped his hand on the table, and the chuckle turned into a roar. "How I would love to have seen that fight, My Lady. Oh, how I would love to have seen it."

Po was smiling. "The lady won, which I doubt will surprise you."

Katsa glowered. "It was a draw. No one won."

"I say." It was Giddon's voice, and as he entered the room and looked from Katsa to Po, his eyes grew dark. He put his hand to his sword. He whirled on Po. "I don't see where you come off fighting the Lady Katsa."

"Giddon," said Katsa. "Don't be ridiculous."

Giddon turned to her. "He had no right to attack you."

"I struck the first blow, Giddon. Sit down."

"If you struck the first blow then he must have insulted you – "

Katsa jumped up from her seat. "That's enough, Giddon – if you think I need you to defend me – "

"A guest to this court, a total stranger – "

"Giddon – "

"Lord Giddon." Po had risen to his feet, and his voice cut through hers. "If I've insulted your lady," he said, "you must forgive me. I rarely have the pleasure of practicing with someone of her caliber, and I couldn't resist the temptation. I can assure you she did more damage to me than I did to her."

Giddon didn't take his hand from his sword, but his grimace lessened.

"I'm sorry to have insulted you, as well," Po said. "I see now I should've taken greater care of her face. Forgive me. It was unpardonable." He reached his hand across the table.

Giddon's angry eyes grew warm again. He reached out and shook Po's hand. "You understand my concern," Giddon said.

"Of course."

Katsa looked from one of them to the other, the two of them shaking hands, understanding each other's concern. She didn't see where Giddon came off feeling insulted. She didn't see how Giddon had any place in it at all. Who were they, to take her fight away from her and turn it into some sort of understanding between themselves? He should've taken more care of her face? She would knock his nose from his face. She would thump them both, and she would apologize to neither.

Po caught her eyes then, and she did nothing to soften the silent fury she sent across the table to him. "Shall we sit?" someone said. Po held her eyes as they sat. There was no trace of humor in his expression, no trace of the arrogance of his exchange with Giddon. And then he mouthed two words. It was as clear as if he'd said them aloud. "Forgive me."

Well.

Giddon was still a horse's ass.

Sixteen Council members attended the meeting, in addition to Po and Lord Davit: Katsa, Raffin, Giddon, Oll, and Oll's wife, Bertol; two soldiers under Oll's command, two spies who worked with him, three underlords of Giddon's rank, and four servants – one a woman who worked in the kitchens of the castle, one a stable hand, one a washerwoman, and one a clerk in Randa's countinghouse. There were others in the castle involved with the Council. But most nights, these were their representatives, along with Bann, when he could get away.

Since the meeting had been called to hear Lord Davit's information, the Council wasted no time.

"I regret I can't tell you who kidnapped Prince Tealiff," Davit said. "You would, of course, prefer that type of information. But I may be able to tell you who didn't. My lands border Estill and Nander. My neighbors are the borderlords of King Thigpen and King Drowden. These borderlords have worked with the Council, and some of them are in the confidence of Thigpen's and Drowden's spies. Prince Raffin," Davit said, "these men are certain that neither King Thigpen nor King Drowden was involved in the kidnapping of the Lienid."

Raffin and Katsa caught each other's eyes.

"Then it must be King Birn of Wester," Raffin said.

And so it must, though Katsa couldn't imagine the motive.

"Tell us your sources," Oll said, "and your sources' sources. We'll look into it. If this turns out to be true information, we'll be that much closer to an explanation."

The meeting did not go on long. The seven kingdoms had been quiet, and Davit's news was enough to occupy Oll and the other spies for the time being.

"It would help us, Prince Greening," Raffin said, "if you'd allow us to keep your grandfather's rescue a secret for now. We can't guarantee his safety if we don't even know who attacked him."

"Of course," Po said. "I agree."

"But perhaps a cryptic message to your family," Raffin said, "to say that all's well with him..."

"Yes, I think I could fashion such a message."

"Excellent." Raffin clapped his hands on the table. "Anything else? Katsa?"

"I've nothing," Katsa said.

"Good." Raffin stood. "Until we hear some news, then, or until Grandfather Tealiff remembers more. Giddon, will you take Lord Davit back to his rooms? Oll, Horan, Waller, Bertol, will you come with me? I wish a moment. We'll take the inner passage, Katsa, if you don't mind a parade through your sleeping room."

"Go ahead," Katsa said. "It's better than a parade through the corridors."

"The prince," Raffin said. "Katsa, will you take the prince – "

"Yes. Go on."

Raffin turned away with Oll and the spies; the soldiers and the servants said their good-byes, and departed.

"I trust you've recovered from your illness at dinner, Katsa," Giddon said, "if you've been starting fights. Indeed, it sounds as if you're back to your normal self."

She would be civil to him in front of Po and Lord Davit, though he laughed now in her face. "Yes, thank you, Giddon. Good night to you."

Giddon nodded and left with Lord Davit. Po and Katsa were alone. Po leaned back against the table. "Am I not trusted to find my way through the halls by myself?"

"He meant for me to take you through an inner passageway," Katsa said. "If you're seen wandering around the hallways of Randa's court at this hour, people will talk. This court will turn the most mundane thing into something to talk about."

"Yes," he said. "I believe that's the case with most courts."

"Do you plan to stay long at the court?"

"I should like to stay until my grandfather's feeling better."

"Then we'll have to come up with an excuse for your presence," Katsa said. "For isn't it generally known that you seek your grandfather?"

Po nodded. "If you agreed to train with me," he said, "that might serve as an excuse."

She began to put out the torches. "What do you mean?"

"People would understand," he said, "if I stayed in order to train with you. They must see that in our view, it's a valuable opportunity. For both of us."

She paused before the last torch and considered his proposal. She understood him completely. She was tired of fighting nine or ten men at once, fully armored men, none of them able to touch her, and she always tempering her blows. It would be a thrill, a pure thrill, to fight Po again. To fight him regularly, a dream.

"Wouldn't it seem as if you'd given up the search for your grandfather?"

"I've already been to Wester," he said, "and Sunder. I can travel to Nander and Estill under the guise of seeking information, can't I, using this city as my base? No city's more central than Randa's."

He could do that, and no one would have reason to question it. She put out the last torch and walked back to him. Half of his face was lit by the light in the hall outside the door. It was his gold eye, his blackened eye, that was illuminated. She looked up at him and set her chin.

"I'll train with you," she said. "But don't expect me to take more care of your face than I did today."

He burst into laughter, but then his eyes sobered, and he looked at the floor. "Forgive me for that, Katsa. I wished to make an ally of Lord Giddon, not an enemy. It seemed the only way."

Katsa shook her head with impatience. "Giddon is a fool."

"He reacted naturally enough," he said, "considering his position."

He brought his fingertips to her chin suddenly. She froze, forgetting the question she'd been about to ask, regarding Giddon, and what in the Middluns his position should be. He tilted her face to the light.

"It was my ring."

She didn't understand him.

"It was my ring that scratched you."

"Your ring."

"Well, one of my rings."

It was one of his rings that scratched her, and now his fingertips touched her face. His hand dropped, returning to his side, and he looked at her calmly, as if this were normal, as if friends she'd only just made always touched her face with their fingertips. As if she ever made friends. As if she had any basis for comparison, to decide what was normal when one made friends, and what was not.

She was not normal.

She marched to the doorway and grabbed the torch from the wall. "Come," she said. For it was time to get him out of here, this strange person, this cat-eyed person who seemed created to rattle her. She would knock those eyes out of his face the next time they fought. She would knock the hoops from his ears and the rings from his hands.

It was time to get him out of here, so that she could return to her rooms and return to herself.

CHAPTER TEN

He was a marvelous opponent. She couldn't get to him. She couldn't hit him where she meant to, or as hard as she wanted. He was so quick to block or to twist, so quick to react. She couldn't knock him from his feet, she couldn't trap him when their fight had devolved into a wrestling match on the floor.

He was so much stronger than she, and for the first time in her life, she found her lesser strength to be a disadvantage. No one had ever gotten close enough to her for it to matter, before this.

He was so finely tuned to his surroundings, and to her movements; and that was also part of the challenge. He always seemed to know what she was doing, even when she was behind him.

"I'll grant you don't have night vision if you'll grant you have eyes in the back of your head," she said once, when she'd entered the practice room and he'd greeted her without looking round to identify her.

"What do you mean?"

"You always know what's happening behind you."

"Katsa, do you never notice the noise you make when you burst into a room? No one flings doors open the way you do."

"Perhaps your Grace gives you a heightened sense of things," she said.

He shook his head. "Perhaps, but no more than your own."

He still got the worst of their fights, because of her flexibility and her tireless energy, and mostly because of her speed. She might not hit him how she wanted, but she still hit him. And he suffered pain more. He stopped the fight once while she grappled to pin his arm and his legs and his back to the ground and he hit her repeatedly in the ribs with his one free hand.

"Doesn't that hurt?" he said, gasping with laughter. "Don't you feel it? I've hit you possibly twelve times, and you don't even flinch."

She sat up on her heels and felt the spot, below her breast. "It hurts, but it's not bad."

"Your bones are made of rock. You walk away from these fights without a sore spot, while I limp away and spend the day icing my bruises."

He didn't wear his rings while they fought. He'd come without them the first day. When she'd protested that it was an unnecessary precaution, his face had assumed a mask of innocence.

"I promised Giddon, didn't I?" he'd said, and that fight had begun with Po ducking, and laughing, as Katsa swung at his face.

They didn't wear their boots, either, not after Katsa accidentally clipped him on the forehead. He had dropped to his hands and knees, and she saw at once what had happened. "Call Raft'!" she'd cried to Oll, who watched on the side. She'd sat Po on the floor, ripped off her own sleeve, and tried to stop the flow of blood that ran into his dazed eyes. When Raffin had given him the go-ahead to fight a few days later, she'd insisted they fight barefoot. And in truth, she had taken more care of his face since then.

They almost always practiced in front of an audience. A scattering of soldiers, or underlords. Oll, whenever he could, for the fights gave him so much pleasure. Giddon, though he always seemed to grow grumpy as he watched and never stayed long. Even Helda came on occasion, the only woman who did, and sat with wide eyes that grew wider the longer she sat.

Randa did not come, which was pleasant. Katsa was glad of his tendency to keep her at arm's length.

They ate together most days, after practicing. In her dining room, alone, or in Raffin's workrooms with Raffin and Bann. Sometimes at a table Raffin had brought into Tealiff's room. The grandfather was still very ill, but company seemed to cheer and strengthen him.

When they sat together talking, sometimes the silver and gold of Po's eyes caught her off guard. She could not become used to his eyes; they muddled her. But she met them when he looked at her, and she forced herself to breathe and talk and not become overwhelmed. They were eyes, they were only his eyes, and she wasn't a coward. And besides, she didn't want to behave toward him as the entire court behaved toward her, avoiding her eyes, awkwardly, coldly. She didn't want to do that to a friend.

He was a friend; and in the final few weeks of summer, for the first time in her life, Randa's court became a place of contentment for Katsa. A place of good hard work and of friends. Oll's spies moved steadily, learning what they could from their travels to Nander and Estill. The kingdoms, amazingly, were at peace. The heat and the closeness of the air seemed to bring a lull to Randa's cruelty as well, or perhaps he was merely distracted by the flood of foods and wares that always washed into the city from every trade route at that time of year. Whatever the reason, Randa did not summon Katsa to perform any of his nasty errands. Katsa found herself daring to relax into summer's end.

She never ran out of questions for Po.

"Where'd you get your name?" she asked him one day as they sat in the grandfather's room, talking quietly so as not to wake him.

Po wound a cloth wrapped with ice around his shoulder. "Which one? I've got lots to choose from."

Katsa reached across the table to help him tie the cloth tight. "Po. Does everyone call you that?"

"My brothers gave me that name when I was little. It's a kind of tree in Lienid, the po tree. In autumn its leaves turn Silver and gold. Inevitable nickname, I guess."

Katsa broke a piece of bread. She wondered if the name had been given fondly, or if it had been an attempt by Po's brothers to isolate him – to remind him always that he was Graceling. She watched him pile his plate high with bread, meat, fruit, and cheese and smiled as the food began to disappear almost as fast as he'd piled it up. Katsa could eat a lot, but Po was something else altogether.

"What is it like to have six older brothers?"

"I don't think it was for me what it would be for most others," he said. "Hand fighting is revered in Lienid. My brothers are great fighters, and of course I was able to hold my own with them, even though I was small – and eventually surpass them, every one of them. They treated me like an equal, like more than an equal."

"And were they also your friends?"

"Oh yes, especially the younger ones."

Perhaps it was easier, then, to be a fighter if one was a boy or in a kingdom that revered hand fighting; or perhaps Po's Grace had announced itself less drastically than Katsa's had. Perhaps if Katsa had six older brothers, she would also have six friends.

Or maybe everything was different in Lienid.

"I've heard the Lienid castles are built on mountain peaks so high that people have to be lifted up to them by ropes," she said.

Po grinned. "Only my father's city has the ropes." He poured himself more water and turned back to the food on his plate.

"Well?" Katsa said. "Are you going to explain them to me?"

"Katsa. Is it too much for you to understand that a man might be hungry after you've beaten him half to death? I'm beginning to think it's part of your fighting strategy, keeping me from eating. You want me weak and faint."

"For someone who's Lienid's finest fighter," she said, "you have a delicate constitution."

He laughed and put his fork down. "All right, all right. How can I describe this?" He picked his fork up again and used it to draw a picture in the air as he spoke. "My father's city sits at the top of this enormous, tall rock, tall as a mountain, that rises straight up from the plains below. There are three ways up to the city. One is a road built into the sides of the rock, that winds around and around it, slowly. The second is a stairway built into one side of the rock. It bends back and forth on itself until it reaches the top. It's a good approach, if you're strong and wide awake and don't have a horse, though most who choose that route eventually tire and end up begging a ride from someone on the road. My brothers and I race it sometimes."

"Who wins?"

"Where's your confidence in me, that you need to ask that question? You would beat us all, of course."

"My ability to fight has no bearing on my ability to run up a flight of stairs."

"Nonetheless, I can't imagine you allowing anyone to beat you at anything."

Katsa snorted. "And the third way?"

"The third way is the ropes."

"But how do they work?"

Po scratched his head. "Well, it's fairly simple, really. They hang from a great wheel that sits flat, on its side, at the top of the rock. They dangle down over the edge of the rock, and at the bottom they're attached to platforms. Horses turn the wheel, the wheel pulls the ropes, and the platforms rise."

"It seems a terrible amount of trouble."

"Mostly everyone uses the road. The ropes are only for great shipments of things."

"And the whole city sits up in the sky?"

Po broke himself another piece of bread and nodded.

"But why would they build a city in such a place?"

Po shrugged. "I suppose because it's beautiful."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you can see forever from the edges of the city. The fields, the mountains and hills. To one side, the sea."

"The sea," Katsa said.

The sea put an end to her questions for a moment. Katsa had seen the lakes of Nander, some of them so wide she could barely make out the opposite shore. But she'd never seen the sea. She couldn't imagine that much water. Nor could she imagine water that rocked, and crashed against the land, as she'd heard the sea did. She stared absently at the walls of Tealiff's small room, and tried to think of it.

"You can see two of my brothers' castles from the city," Po said. "In the foothills of the mountains. The other castles are beyond the mountains, or too far to see."

"How many castles are there?"

"Seven," Po said, "just as there are seven sons."

"Then one is yours."

"The smallest one."

"Do you mind that yours is the smallest?"

Po chose an apple from the bowl of fruit on the table. "I'm glad mine is the smallest, though my brothers don't believe me when I say so."

She didn't blame them for disbelieving. She'd never heard of a man, not even her cousin, who didn't want as large a holding as he could have. Giddon was always comparing his estate to that of his neighbors; and when Raffin listed his complaints about Thigpen, he never neglected to mention a certain disagreement over the precise location of the Middluns' eastern border. She'd thought all men were like that. She'd thought she wasn't like that because she wasn't a man.

"I don't have the ambitions of my brothers," Po said. "I've never wanted a large holding. I've never wanted to be a king or an overlord."

"No," Katsa said, "nor have I. I've thanked the hills countless times that Raffin was born the son of Randa, and I only his niece, and his sister's daughter at that."

"My brothers want all that power," he said. "They love to get wrapped up in the disputes of my father's court. They actually revel in it. They love managing their own castles and their own cities. I do believe sometimes that they all wish to be king."

He leaned back in his chair and absently ran his fingers along his sore shoulder.

"My castle doesn't have a city," he said. "It's not far from a town, but the town governs itself. It doesn't have a court, either. Really it's just a great house that'll be my home for the times when I'm not traveling."

Katsa took an apple for herself. "You intend to travel."

"I'm more restless than my brothers. But it's so beautiful, my castle; it's the most wonderful place to go home to. It sits on a cliff above the sea. There are steps down to the water, cut into the cliff. And balconies hanging over the cliff – you feel as if you'll fall if you lean too far. At night the sun goes down across the water, and the whole sky turns red and orange, and the sea to match it. Sometimes there are great fish out there, fish of impossible colors. They come to the surface and roll about – you can watch them from the balconies. And in winter the waves are high, and the wind'll knock you down. You can't go out to the balconies in winter. It's dangerous, and wild."

"Grandfather," he said suddenly. He jumped up and turned to the bed.

Informed that his grandfather had awoken, Katsa thought wryly, by the eyes in the back of his head.

"You speak of your castle, boy," the old man said.

"Grandfather, how are you feeling?"

Katsa ate her apple and listened to them talk. Her head was full of the things Po had said. She hadn't known there were sights in the world so beautiful a person would want to spend an age staring at them.

Po turned to her then, and a torch on the wall caught the gleam of his eyes. She focused on breathing. "I have a weakness for beautiful sights," he said. "My brothers tease me."

"Your brothers are the foolish ones," Tealiff said, "for not seeing the strength in beautiful things. Come here, child," he said to Katsa. "Let me see your eyes, for they make me stronger."

And his kindness brought a smile to her face, though his words were nonsense. She went to sit beside Grandfather Tealiff, and he and Po told her more about Po's castle and Po's brothers and Ror's city in the sky

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"How far is Giddon's estate from Randa City?" Po asked her late one morning. They sat on the floor of their practice room, drinking water and resting. It had been a good session. Po had returned the day before from a visit to Nander, and Katsa thought the time apart had been good for them. They came together again with a new sharpness.

"It's near," Katsa said. "In the west. A day's journey, perhaps."

"Have you seen it?"

"Yes. It's large and very grand. He doesn't get home often, but he still manages to keep it well."

"I'm sure he does."

Giddon had come to their practice today. He'd been the only visitor, and he hadn't stayed long. She didn't know why he came, when it always seemed to put him in a bad humor.

Katsa lay on her back and looked up at the high ceiling. The light poured into the room from the great, east-facing windows. The days were beginning to shorten. The air would crispen soon, and the castle would smell of wood burning in the fireplaces. The leaves would crackle under her horse's hooves when she went riding.

It had been such a quiet couple of weeks. She would like a Council task – she'd like to get out of the city and stretch her legs. She wondered if Oll had any news about Grandfather Tealiff yet. Maybe she could go to Wester herself and poke around for information.

"How will you answer Giddon when he asks you to marry him?" Po asked. "Will you accept?"

Katsa sat up, and stared at him. "That's an absurd question."

"Absurd – why?" His face was clear of its usual smiles. She didn't think he was teasing her.

"Why in the Middluns would Giddon ask me to marry him?"

His eyes narrowed. "Katsa. You're not serious."

She looked at him blankly, and now he did begin to smile. "Katsa, don't you know Giddon's in love with you?"

Katsa snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. Giddon lives to criticize me."

Po shook his head, and his laugh began to rumble from his chest. "Katsa, how can you be so blind? He's completely smitten. Don't you see how jealous he is? Don't you remember how he reacted when I scratched your face?"

An unpleasant feeling began to gather in her stomach. "I don't see what that has to do with it. And besides, how would you know? I don't believe Lord Giddon confides in you."

He laughed. "No," he said. "No, he certainly doesn't. Giddon trusts me about as much as he trusts Murgon. I imagine he thinks any man who fights you as I do is no better than an Opportunist and no worse than a thug."

"You're deceived," Katsa said. "Giddon feels nothing for me."

"I can't make you see it, Katsa, if you're determined not to see it." Po stretched onto his back and yawned. "All the same, I might think up a response if I were you. Just in case he were to propose." He laughed again. "I'll have to ice my shoulder, as usual. I'd say you won again today, Katsa."

She jumped to her feet. "Are we done here?"

"I suppose so. Are you hungry?"

She waved him off and marched to the door. She left him lying on his back in the light of the windows and ran to find Raffin.

Katsa burst into Raffin's workrooms. Raffin and Bann sat at a table, huddled together over a book.

"Are you alone?" Katsa asked.

They looked up, surprised. "Yes – "

"Is Giddon in love with me?"

Raffin blinked, and Bann's eyes widened.

"He's never spoken to me about it," Raffin said. "But yes, I think anyone who knows him would say he's in love with you."

Katsa slapped her hand to her forehead. "Of all the fool – how can he – " She paced to the table. She turned and paced back to the door.

"Has he said something to you?" Raffin asked.

"No. Po told me." She spun toward Raffin. "And why did you never tell me?"

"Kat." He sat back from his book. "I thought you knew. I don't see how you could not. He makes himself your escort every time the king's business takes you away from the city. He always sits beside you at dinner."

"Randa decides where we sit at dinner."

"Well, and Randa probably knows Giddon hopes to marry you," Raffin said.

Katsa paced to the table again, clutching her hair. "Oh, this is dreadful. Whatever shall I do?"

"If he asks you to marry him, you'll say no. You'll tell him it's nothing to do with him. You'll tell him you're determined not to marry, that you don't wish children; whatever you need to say so he understands it's nothing to do with him."

"I wouldn't marry Giddon to save my life," Katsa said. "Not even to save yours."

"Well." Raffin's eyes were full of laughter. "I'd leave that part out."

Katsa sighed and walked again to the door.

"You're not the most perceptive person I've ever known, Kat," Raffin said, "if you don't mind my saying so. Your capacity for missing the obvious is astonishing."

She threw her arms into the air. She turned to go. She turned back to him suddenly, at a shocking thought. "You're not in love with me, are you?"

He stared at her for a moment, speechless. Then he burst into laughter. Bann laughed, too, though he tried valiantly to hide it behind his hand. Katsa was too relieved to be offended.

"All right, all right," she said, "I suppose I deserve that."

"My dear Katsa," Raffin said, "Giddon is so very handsome, are you sure you won't reconsider?"

Raffin and Bann clutched their stomachs and guffawed. Katsa waved their nonsense away. They were hopeless. She turned to go.

"Council meeting tonight," Raffin said to her back.

She raised her hand to show she'd heard. She closed the door on their laughter.

"There's very little happening in the seven kingdoms," Oll said. "We've called this meeting only because we have some information about Prince Tealiff we can't make any sense of. We're hoping you'll have some ideas."

Bann had joined them for this meeting, because the grandfather was well enough now to be left alone on occasion. Katsa had taken advantage of Bann's broad chest and shoulders, and seated him between herself and Giddon. Giddon could not possibly see her; but just in case, she'd positioned Raffin between them as well. Oll and Po were across from her. Po sat back in his chair, his eyes glimmering in the corner of her vision no matter which way she looked.

"Lord Davit gave us true information," Oll said. "Neither Nander nor Estill knows anything of the kidnapping. Neither was involved. But now we're almost certain that King Birn of Wester is also innocent."

"Could it be Murgon, then?" Giddon asked.

"But with what motive?" Katsa asked.

"He has no motive," Raffin said. "But then, he has no less motive than anyone else. It's what we keep coming up against. There is no motive for anyone to have done this. Even Po – Prince Greening – has been able to come up with none."

Po nodded. "My grandfather's only importance is to his family."

"And if someone had it in mind to provoke the Lienid royal family," Oll said, "wouldn't they reveal themselves eventually? Otherwise, the power play becomes pointless."

"Has Tealiff said anything more?" Giddon asked.

"He's said they blindfolded him," Po said, "and drugged him. He's said he was on a boat for a long time, and their land travel was shorter in comparison, which suggests his captors took him east by boat from Lienid, possibly to one of the southern Sunderan ports. And then up through the forests to Murgon City. He's said that when he heard them speak, he believed their accents to be southern."

"It does suggest Sunder, and Murgon," Giddon said.

But it didn't make sense. None of the kings had reason, but Murgon even less. Murgon worked for others, and his sole motivation was money. Everyone at the table, everyone in the Council, knew that.

"Po," Katsa said. "Your grandfather had no argument with your father, or any of your brothers? Your mother?"

"None," Po said. "I'm sure of it."

"I don't see how you can be so sure," Giddon said.

Po's eyes flashed to him. "You'll have to take my word, Lord Giddon. Neither my father nor my brothers nor my mother nor anyone else at the Lienid court was involved in the kidnapping."

"Po's word is good enough for the Council," Raffin said. "And if it wasn't Birn, Drowden, Thigpen, Randa, or Ror, that leaves Murgon."

Po raised his eyebrows. "Have none of you considered the King of Monsea?"

"A king with a reputation for kindness to injured animals and lost children," Giddon said, "come out of his isolation to kidnap his wife's aging father? A bit unlikely, don't you think?"

"We've made inquiries and uncovered nothing," Oll said. "King Leck is a peace-loving man. Either it's Murgon, or one of the kings is keeping a secret even from his own spies."

"It may have been Murgon," Katsa said, "or it may not. Either way, Murgon knows who's responsible. If Murgon knows, then the people closest to him know. Couldn't we find one of Murgon's people? I could make him talk."

"Not without revealing your identity, My Lady," Oll said.

"But she could kill him," Giddon said, "after she questioned him."

"Now, hold on." Katsa held up her hand. "I said nothing of killing."

"But it's not worth the information, Katsa," Raffin said, "for you to interrogate someone who'll recognize you and speak of it to Murgon afterward."

"Greening should be the one to do it, anyway," Giddon said, and Po's cool eyes flicked to him again. "Murgon wouldn't question the motivation of a Lienid prince. Murgon would expect it of him. In fact, I don't see why you haven't done it already," Giddon said to Po, "if you wish so much to know who's responsible."

Katsa was too irritated to care about her strategic seating plan. She leaned around Raffin and Bann to address Giddon. "It's because Murgon can't know that Po knows Murgon is involved," she said. "How would Po explain that knowledge, without incriminating us?"

"But that's just why you can't question Murgon's people, Katsa, unless you're willing to kill afterwards." Giddon thumped his hand on the table and glared at her.

"All right," Raffin said, "all right. We're going in circles."

Katsa sat back, seething.

"Katsa," Raffin said, "the information isn't worth the risk to you or to the Council. Nor, I think, is it worth the violence."

She sighed, inwardly. He was right, of course.

"Perhaps it'll be worth it someday in the future," Raffin said. "But for now, Grandfather Tealiff is safe, and we've seen no sign from Murgon or from anyone else that he's being targeted again. Po, if there are steps you wish to take, that's your affair, though I'd ask you to discuss it with us first."

"I must think on it," Po said.

"Then the matter is closed for now," Raffin said, "until we learn something new, or until Po comes to a decision. Oll? Is there anything else on the table?"

Oll began to speak then of a Westeran village that had met a Nanderan raiding party with a pair of catapults, given to them by a Westeran lord who was friend to the Council. The Nanderan raiders had fled, thinking they were being attacked by an army. There was laughter at the table, and Oll began another story, but Katsa's thoughts wandered to Murgon and his dungeons, to the Sunderan forests that likely held the secrets of the kidnapping. She felt Po's gaze, and she glanced at him across the table. His eyes were on her, but he didn't see her. His mind was elsewhere. He got that look sometimes, when they sat together after their fights.

She watched his face. The cut on his forehead was no more than a thin red line now. It would leave a scar. She wondered if that would rankle his Lienid vanity, but then she smiled within herself. He wasn't really vain. He hadn't cared a bit when she'd blackened his eye. He'd done nothing to hide the gash on his forehead. And besides, no vain person would choose to fight her, day after day. No vain person would put his body at the mercy of her hands.

His sleeves were rolled to his elbows again. His manners were so careless. Her eyes rested on the shadows in the hollows of his neck, then rose to his face again. She supposed he would have reason to be vain. He was handsome enough, as handsome as Giddon or Raffin, with his straight nose and the set of his mouth, and his strong shoulders. And even those gleaming eyes. Even they might be considered handsome.

His eyes came back into focus then and looked into hers. And then something mischievous in his eyes, and a grin. Almost as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, exactly what she'd decided about his claims to vanity. Katsa's face closed, and she glowered at him.

The meeting ended, and chairs scraped. Raffin pulled her aside to speak of something. She was grateful for the excuse to turn away. She wouldn't see Po again until their next fight. And the fights always returned her to herself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next morning Randa came to their practice for the first time. He stood at the side, so that everyone in the room was compelled to stand as well and watch him instead of the fighters they'd come to see. Katsa was glad to fight, glad for the excuse to ignore him. Except that she couldn't ignore him. He was so tall and broad, and he stood against the white wall in bright blue robes. His lazy laugh carried into every corner of the room. She couldn't shake the sense of him – and there must be something he wanted. He never sought out his lady killer unless there was something he wanted.

She had been running through a drill with Po when Randa had arrived, a drill that was giving her some trouble. It began with Katsa on her knees and Po behind her, pinning her arms behind her back. Her task was to break free of Po's grip and then grapple with him until she had trapped him in the same position. She could always fight her way free of Po's grip. That wasn't the problem. It was the counterpin that frustrated her. Even if she managed to knock him to his knees and trap his arms, she couldn't keep him down. It was a matter of brute strength. If he tried to muscle himself to his feet, she didn't have the force to stop him, not unless she knocked him unconscious or injured him seriously, and that wasn't the point of the exercise. She needed to find a holding position that would make the effort of rising too painful to be worth his while.

They began the drill again. She knelt with Po at her back, and Po's hands tightened around her wrists. Randa's voice rose and fell, and one of the stewards responded. Flattering, fawning. Everyone flattered Randa.

Katsa was ready for Po this time. She twisted out of his grip and was on him like a wildcat. She pummeled his stomach, hooked her foot between his legs, and battered him to his knees. She yanked at his arms. His right shoulder – that was the one he was always icing. She twisted his right arm and leaned all her weight against it, so that any attempt to move would require him to wrench his shoulder and bring more pain to it than she was already causing him to feel.

"I surrender," he gasped. She released him, and he heaved himself to his feet. He massaged his shoulder. "Good work, Katsa."

"Again."

They ran through the drill again, and then once more, and both times she trapped him easily.

"You've got it," Po said. "Good. What next? Shall I try it?"

Her name cut through the air then, and her hackles rose. She'd been right. He hadn't come only to watch; and now, before all these people, she must act pleasant and civil. She fought against the frown that rose to her face, and turned to the king.

"It's so amusing," Randa said, "to see you struggling with an opponent, Katsa."

"I'm glad it gives you amusement, Lord King."

"Prince Greening. How do you find our lady killer?"

"She's the superior fighter by far, Lord King," Po said. "If she didn't hold herself back, I'd be in great trouble."

Randa laughed. "Indeed. I've noticed it's you who comes to dinner with bruises, and not she."

Pride in his possession. Katsa forced herself to unclench her fists. She forced herself to breathe, to hold her uncle's gaze even though she wanted to scratch the leer from his face.

"Katsa," the king said. "Come to me later today. I have a job for you."

"Yes, Lord King," she said. "Thank you, Lord King."

Randa leaned back on his heels and surveyed the room. Then, with his stewards rushing into their places behind him, he exited with a great swish of blue robes, and Katsa stared after him until he and his entourage had vanished; and then she stared at the door the stewards slammed behind him.

Around the room, slowly, lords and soldiers sat down. Katsa was vaguely aware of their movements. Vaguely aware of Po's eyes on her face, watching her, silently.

"What's it to be now, Katsa?"

She knew what she wanted. She felt it shooting down her arms and into her fingers, tingling in her legs and feet. "A straight fight," she said. "Anything fair. Until one of us surrenders."

Po narrowed his eyes. He considered her tight fists and her hard mouth. "We'll have that fight, but we'll have it tomorrow. We're done for today."

"No. We fight."

"Katsa. We're done."

She stalked up to him, close, so that no one else could hear. "What's the matter, Po? Do you fear me?"

"Yes, I fear you, as I should when you're angry. I won't fight you when you're angry. Nor should you fight me when I'm angry. That's not the purpose of these practices."

And when he told her she was angry, she realized it was true. And just as quickly, her anger fizzled into despair. Randa would send her on another strong-arm mission. He would send her to hurt some poor petty criminal, some fool who deserved to keep his fingers even if he was dishonorable. He would send her, and she must go, for the power sat with him.

They ate in her dining room. Katsa stared at her plate. He was talking about his brothers, how his brothers would love to see their practices. She must come to Lienid one day and fight with him for his family. They'd be amazed by her skill, and they'd honor her greatly. And he could show her the most beautiful sights in his father's city.

She wasn't listening. She was picturing the arms she'd broken for her uncle. The arms, bent the wrong way at the elbow, bone splinters sticking through the skin. He said something about his shoulder, and she shook herself, and looked at him.

"What did you say?" she asked. "About your shoulder? I'm sorry."

He dropped his gaze and fiddled with his fork. "Your uncle has quite an effect on you," he said. "You haven't been yourself since he walked into the practice room."

"Or maybe I have been myself, and the other times I'm not myself."

"What do you mean?"

"My uncle thinks me savage. He thinks me a killer. Well, isn't he right? Didn't I become savage when he entered the room? And what is it we're practicing every day?" She tore apart a piece of bread and threw it onto her plate. She glared at her meal.

"I don't believe you're savage," he said.

She sighed, sharply. "You haven't seen me with Randa's enemies."

He raised his cup to his lips and drank, then lowered it, watching her. "What will he ask you to do this time?"

She pushed the fire down that rose up from her stomach. She wondered what would happen if she slammed her plate on the ground, how many pieces it would break into.

"It'll be some lord who owes him money," she said, "or who refused to agree to some bargain, or who looked at him wrong. I'll be told to hurt the man, enough so that he never dishonors my uncle again."

"And you'll do what he tells you to do?"

"Who are these fools who continue to resist Randa's will? Haven't they heard the stories? Don't they know he'll send me?"

"Isn't it in your power to refuse?" Po asked. "How can anyone force you to do anything?"

The fire burst into her throat and choked her. "He is the king. And you're a fool, too, if you think I have choice in the matter."

"But you do have choice. He's not the one who makes you savage. You make yourself savage, when you bend yourself to his will."

She sprang to her feet and swung at his jaw with the side of her hand. She lessened the force of the blow only at the last instant, when she realized he hadn't raised his arm to block her. Her hand hit his face with a sickening crack. She watched, horrified, as his chair toppled backward and his head slammed against the floor. She'd hit him hard. She knew she'd hit him hard. And he hadn't defended himself.

She ran to him. He lay on his side, both hands over his jaw A tear trickled from his eye, over his fingers, and onto the floor. He grunted, or sobbed – she didn't know which. She knelt beside him and touched his shoulder. "Did I break your jaw? Can you speak?"

He shifted then, pushed himself up to a sitting position. He felt at the side of his jaw and opened and closed his mouth. He moved his jaw left and right.

"I don't think it's broken." His voice was a whisper.

She put her hand to his face and felt the bones under his skin. She felt the other side of his face to compare. She could tell no difference, and she caught her breath with relief.

"It's not broken," he said, "though it seems it should be."

"I pulled back," she said, "when I realized you weren't fighting me." She reached up to the table and dipped her hands into the water pitcher. She scooped blocks of ice onto a cloth and wrapped them up. She brought the ice to his jaw. "Why didn't you fight back?"

He held the ice to his face and groaned. "This'll hurt for days."

"Po..."

He looked at her, and sighed. "I told you before, Katsa. I won't fight when you're angry. I won't solve a disagreement between us with blows." He lifted the ice and fingered his jaw. He moaned, and held the ice to his face again. "What we do in the practice rooms – that's to help each other. We don't use it against each other. We're friends, Katsa."

Shame pricked behind her eyes. It was so elemental, so obvious. It wasn't what one friend did to another, yet she'd done it.

"We're too dangerous to each other, Katsa. And even if we weren't, it's not right."

"I'll never do it again," she said. "I swear to it."

He caught her eyes then, and held them. "I know you won't. Katsa. Wildcat. Don't blame yourself. You expected me to fight back. You wouldn't have struck me otherwise."

But still she should have known better. "It wasn't even you who angered me. It was him."

Po considered her for a moment. "What do you think would happen," he said, "if you refused to do what Randa ordered?"

She didn't know, really. She only imagined him sneering at her, his words crackling with contempt. "If I don't do what he says, he'll become angry. When he becomes angry, I'll become angry. And then I'll want to kill him."

"Hmm." He worked his mouth back and forth. "You're afraid of your own anger."

She stopped then and looked at him, because that seemed right to her. She was afraid of her own anger.

"But Randa isn't even worth your anger," Po said. "He's no more than a bully."

Katsa snorted. "A bully who chops off people's fingers or breaks their arms."

"Not if you stop doing it for him," Po said. "Much of his power comes from you."

She was afraid of her own anger: She repeated it in her mind. She was afraid of what she would do to the king – and with good reason. Look at Po, his jaw red and beginning to swell. She'd learned to control her skill, but she hadn't learned to control her anger. And that meant she still didn't control her Grace.

"Should we move back to the table?" he said, for they were still sitting on the floor.

"You should probably go see Raff," she said, "just to be sure nothing's broken." Her eyes dropped. "Forgive me, Po."

Po heaved himself to his feet. He reached for her hand and pulled her up. "You're forgiven, Lady."

She shook her head, disbelieving his kindness. "You Lienid are so odd; your reactions are never what mine would be. You, so calm, when I've hurt you so badly. Your father's sister, so strange in her grief "

Po narrowed his eyes then. "What do you mean?"

"About what? Isn't the Queen of Monsea your father's sister?"

"What's she done, my father's sister?"

"The word is, she stopped eating when she heard of your grandfather's disappearance. You didn't know? And then she closed herself and her child into her rooms. And wouldn't let anyone enter, not even the king."

"She wouldn't let the king enter," he repeated, puzzlement in his voice.

"Nor anyone else," Katsa said, "except a handmaiden to bring them meals."

"Why did no one tell me about this before?"

"I assumed you knew, Po. I'd no idea it would matter so much to you. Are you close to her?"

Po stared at the table, at the mess of melting ice and their half-eaten meal. His mind was elsewhere, his brow furrowed.

"Po, what is it?"

He shook his head. "It's not how I would've expected Ashen to behave," he said. "But it's no matter. I must find Raffin, or Bann."

She watched his face then. "There's something you're not telling me."

He wouldn't meet her eyes. "How long will you be away on Randa's errand?"

"It's not likely to be more than a few days."

"When you return, I must speak with you."

"Why don't you speak with me now?"

He shook his head. "I need to think. I need to work something out."

Why were his eyes so uneasy? Why was he looking at the table and the floor, but never into her face?

It was concern, for his father's sister. It was worry for the people he cared about. For that was his way, this Lienid. His friendship was true.

He looked at her then. The smallest of smiles flickered across his face, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Don't feel too kindly toward me, Katsa. Neither of us is blameless as a friend."

He left her then, to find Raffin. She stood and stared at the place where he'd just been. And tried to shake off the eerie sense that he had just answered something she'd thought, rather than something she'd said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Not that it was the first time he'd left her with that feeling. Po had a way about him. He knew her opinions, sometimes, before she expressed them. He looked at her from across a table and knew she was angry, and why; or that she'd decided he was handsome.

Raffin had told her she wasn't perceptive. Po was perceptive. And talkative. Perhaps that was why they got along so well. She didn't have to explain herself to Po, and he explained himself to her without her having to ask. She'd never known a person with whom she could communicate so freely – so unused was she to the phenomenon of friendship.

She mused about this as the horses carried them west, until the hills began to even out and give way to great grassy flatlands, and the pleasure of smooth, hard riding distracted her. Giddon was in good humor, for this was his country. They would visit his estate on their way to one just beyond his. They would sleep in his castle, first on their outward journey and then again on their return. Giddon rode eagerly and fast, and though Katsa didn't relish his company, for once she couldn't complain of their pace.

"It's a bit awkward, isn't it?" Oll said, when they stopped at midday to rest. "For the king to have asked you to punish your neighbor?"

"It is awkward," Giddon said. "Lord Ellis is a good neighbor. I can't imagine what has possessed him to create this trouble with Randa."

"Well, he's protecting his daughters," Oll said. "No man can fault him for that. It's Ellis's bad luck that it puts him at odds with the king."

Randa had made a deal with a Nanderan underlord. The underlord couldn't attract a wife, because his holding was in the south-central region of Nander, directly in the path of Westeran and Estillan raiding parties. It was a dangerous place, especially for a woman. And it was a desolate holding, without even sufficient servants, for the raiders had killed and stolen so many. The underlord was desperate for a wife, so desperate that he was willing to forgo her dowry. King Randa had offered to take the trouble to find him a bride, on the condition that her dowry went to Randa.

Lord Ellis had two daughters of marriageable age. Two daughters, and two very great dowries. Randa had ordered Ellis to choose which daughter he would prefer to send as a bride to Nander. "Choose the daughter who is stronger in spirit," Randa had written, "for it is not a match for the weak-hearted."

Lord Ellis had refused to choose either daughter. "Both of my daughters are strong in spirit," he wrote to the king, "but I will send neither to the wastelands of Nander. The king has greater power than any, but I do not think he has the power to force an unsuitable marriage for his own convenience."

Katsa had gasped when Raffin told her what Lord Ellis said in his letter. He was a brave man, as brave as any Randa had come up against. Randa wanted Giddon to talk to Ellis, and if talk didn't work, he wanted Katsa to hurt Ellis – in the presence of his daughters, so that one of them would step forward and offer herself to the marriage to protect her father. Randa expected them to return to his court with one or the other of the daughters, and her dowry.

"This is a gruesome task we're asked to perform," Oll said. "Even without Ellis being your neighbor, it's gruesome."

"It is," Giddon said. "But I see no way around it."

They sat on an outcropping of stone and ate bread and fruit. Katsa watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place and then another. It rose and fell and rose again. It flowed, like water.

"Is this what the sea is like?" Katsa asked, and they both turned to her, surprised. "Does the sea move the way this grass moves?"

"It is like this, My Lady," Oll said, "but different. The sea makes rushing noises, and it's gray and cold. But it does move a bit like this."

"I should like to see the sea," she said.

Giddon's eyes on her were incredulous.

"What? Is it such a strange thing to say?"

"It's a strange thing for you to say." He shook his head. He gathered their bread and fruit, then rose. "The Lienid fighter is filling your mind with romantic notions." He went to his horse.

She ignored him so that she didn't have to think about his own notions of romance or his suit or his jealousy. She rode hard across the flatlands, and imagined she rode across the sea.

It was more difficult to ignore the reality of Giddon once they'd reached his castle. The walls were great, gray, and impressive. The servants flowed into the sunny courtyard to greet their lord and bow to him, and he called them by name and asked after the grain in the storehouses, the castle, the bridge that was being repaired. He was king here, and she could see that he was comfortable with this, and that his servants were happy to see him.

Giddon's servants were always attentive to Katsa, whenever she was at his court. They approached her to ask if she needed anything; they lit a fire for her and brought her water so she could wash. When she walked past them in the hallways, they greeted her. She wasn't treated this way anywhere else, not even in her own home. It occurred to her now that of course, Giddon had specifically ordered his servants to treat her like a lady – not to fear her, or if they did fear her, to pretend they didn't. All of this Giddon had done for her. She realized his servants must look upon her as their future mistress, for if all of Randa's court knew Giddon's feelings, then surely Giddon's servants had interpreted them as well.

She didn't know how to be at Giddon's court now, realizing they all expected something of her she would never give.

She thought they'd be relieved to know she wouldn't marry Giddon. They would exhale and smile, and prepare cheerfully for whatever kind, harmless lady was his second choice. But perhaps they only hoped for their lord what he hoped for himself.

Giddon's hope bewildered her. She couldn't fathom his foolishness, to fall in love with her, and she still didn't entirely believe it to be true.

Oll grew increasingly morose about Lord Ellis.

"It's a cruel task the king has asked us to perform," he said at dinner, in Giddon's private dining room, where the three of them ate with a pair of servants to attend to them. "I can't remember if he's ever asked us to perform a task so cruel."

"He has," Giddon said, "and we've performed it. And you've never spoken like this before."

"It just seems..." Oll broke off to stare absently at Giddon's walls, covered with rich tapestries in red and gold. "It just seems that this is a task the Council wouldn't condone. The Council would send someone to protect these daughters. From us."

Giddon pushed potatoes onto his fork and chewed. He considered Oll's words. "We can't do any work for the Council," he said, "if we don't also follow Randa's commands. We're no use to anyone if we're sitting in the dungeons."

"Yes," Oll said. "But still, it doesn't seem right."

By the end of the meal, Giddon was as morose as Oll. Katsa watched Oll's craggy face and his unhappy eyes. She watched Giddon eating, his knife reflecting the gold and red of the walls as he cut his meat. His voice was low, and he sighed – they both sighed, Oll and Giddon, as they talked and ate.

They didn't want to perform this task for Randa. As Katsa watched them and listened, the fingers of her mind began to open and reach around for some means by which they might thwart Randa's instructions.

Po had said it was in her power to refuse Randa. And maybe it was in her power, as it was not in Oll's or Giddon's, because Randa could punish them in ways he couldn't punish her. Could he punish her? He could use his entire army, perhaps, to force her into his dungeons. He could kill her. Not in a fight, but he could poison her, one night at dinner. If he thought her a danger, or didn't think her useful, he would certainly have her imprisoned or killed.

And what if his anger, when she returned to court without Ellis's daughter, inflamed her own? What would happen at court, if she stood before Randa and felt an anger in her hands and feet she couldn't contain? What would she do?

It didn't matter. When Katsa awoke the next morning in her comfortable bed in Giddon's castle, she knew it didn't matter what Randa might do to her, or what she might do to Randa. If she were forced to injure Lord Ellis today as Randa wished, it would set her into a rage. She sensed the rage building, just at the thought of it. Her rage if she hurt Lord Ellis would be no less catastrophic than her rage if she didn't and Randa retaliated. She would not do it. She wouldn't torture a man who was only trying to protect his children.

She didn't know what would happen because of this. But she knew that today, she would hurt no one. She threw back her blankets and thought only of today.

Giddon and Oll dragged their feet as they prepared their bags and their horses. "Perhaps we'll be able to talk him into an agreement," Giddon said, lamely.

"Humph," was Oll's only response.

Ellis's castle was a few short hours' ride distant. When they arrived, a steward showed them into the great library, where Ellis sat writing at a desk. The walls were lined with books, some so high they could only be reached by ladders made of fine dark wood that leaned against the shelves. Lord Ellis stood as they entered, his eyes bold and his chin high. He was a small man, with a thatch of black hair, and small fingers which he spread across the top of his desk.

"I know why you're here, Giddon," he said.

Giddon cleared his throat uncomfortably. "We wish to talk with you, Ellis, and with your daughters."

"I will not bring my daughters into present company," Ellis said, his eyes flicking to Katsa. He didn't flinch under her gaze, and he went up another notch in her estimation.

Now was the time for her to act. She counted three servants standing rigidly against the walls.

"Lord Ellis," she said, "if you care at all for the safety of your servants, you'll send them from this room."

Giddon glanced at her, surprise apparent on his face, for this was not their usual mode of operation. "Katsa – "

"Don't waste my time, Lord Ellis," Katsa said. "I can remove them myself if you will not."

Lord Ellis waved his men to the door. "Go," he said to them. "Go. Allow no one to enter. See to your duties."

Their duties most likely involved removing the lord's daughters from the grounds immediately, if the daughters were even at home; Lord Ellis struck Katsa as the type to have prepared for this. When the door had closed, she held her hand up to silence Giddon. He shot her a look of puzzled irritation, which she ignored.

"Lord Ellis," she said. "The king wishes us to talk you into sending one of your daughters to Nander. I imagine we're unlikely to succeed."

Ellis's face was hard, and still he held her eyes. "Correct."

Katsa nodded. "Very well. That failing, Randa wishes me to torture you until one of your daughters steps forward and offers herself to the marriage."

Ellis's face didn't change. "I suspected as much."

Giddon's voice was low. "Katsa, what are you doing?"

"The king," Katsa said, and then she felt such a rush of blood to her head that she touched the desk to steady herself. "The king is just in some matters. In this matter, he is not. He wishes to bully you. But the king doesn't do his own bullying – he looks to me for that. And I – " Katsa felt strong suddenly. She pushed away from the desk and stood tall. "I won't do what Randa says. I won't compel you or your daughters to follow his command. My Lord, you may do what you will."

The room was silent. Ellis's eyes were big with astonishment, and he leaned heavily on the desk now, as if danger had strengthened him before and its lack now made him weak. Beside Katsa, Giddon didn't seem to be breathing, and when she glanced at him, his mouth hung slightly ajar. Oll stood a little aside, his face kind and worried.

"Well," Lord Ellis said. "This is quite a surprise, My Lady. I thank you, My Lady. Indeed, I can't thank you enough."

Katsa didn't think a person should thank her for not causing pain. Causing joy was worthy of thanks, and causing pain worthy of disgust. Causing neither was neither, it was nothing, and nothing didn't warrant thanks.

"You don't owe me gratitude," she said. "And I fear this won't put an end to your troubles with Randa."

"Katsa." It was Oll. "Are you certain this is what you want?"

"What will Randa do to you?" Giddon asked.

"Whatever he does," Oll said, "we'll support you."

"No," Katsa said. "You won't support me. I must be on my own in this. Randa must believe that you and Giddon tried to force me to follow his order, but couldn't." She wondered if she should injure them, to make it more convincing.

"But we don't want to perform this task any more than you do," Giddon said. "It's our talk that propelled you to make this choice. We can't stand by and let you – "

Katsa spoke deliberately. "If he knows you disobeyed him, he'll imprison you or kill you. He can't hurt me the way he can hurt you. I don't think his entire guard could capture me. And if they did, at least I don't have a holding that depends on me, as you do, Giddon. I don't have a wife, as you do, Oll."

Giddon's face was dark. He opened his mouth to speak, but Katsa cut through his words. "You two are no use if you're in prison. Raffin needs you. Wherever I may be, I will need you."

Giddon tried to speak. "I won't – "

She would make him see this. She would cut through his obtuseness and make him see this. She slammed her hand on the desk so hard that papers cascaded onto the floor. "I'll kill the king," she said. "I'll kill the king, unless you both agree not to support me. This is my rebellion, and mine alone, and if you don't agree, I swear to you on my Grace I will murder the king."

She didn't know if she would do it. But she knew she seemed wild enough for them to believe she would. She turned to Oll. "Say you agree."

Oll cleared his throat. "It will be as you say, My Lady."

She faced Giddon. "Giddon?"

"I don't like it," he said.

"Giddon – "

"It will be as you say," he said, his eyes on the floor and his face red and gloomy.

Katsa turned to Ellis. "Lord Ellis, if Randa learns that Captain Oll or Lord Giddon agreed to this willingly, I'll know that you spoke. I'll kill you. I'll kill your daughters. Do you understand?"

"I understand, My Lady," Ellis said. "And again, I thank you."

Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

"And now in this room, with only ourselves present," she said, "we'll work out the details of what we'll claim happened here today."

They ate dinner in Giddon's dining room, in Giddon's castle, just as they had the night before. Giddon had given her permission to cut his neck with her knife, and Oll had allowed her to bruise his cheekbone. She would have done it without their permission, for she knew Randa would expect evidence of a scuffle. But Oll and Giddon had seen the wisdom of it; or perhaps they'd guessed she would do it whether or not they agreed. They'd stood still, and bravely. She hadn't enjoyed the task, but she'd caused them as little pain as her skill allowed.

There was not much conversation at dinner. Katsa broke bread, chewed, and swallowed. She stared at the fork and knife in her hands. She stared at her silver goblet.

"The Estillan lord," she said. The men's eyes jumped up from their plates. "The lord who took more lumber from Randa than he should have. You remember him?"

They nodded.

"I didn't hurt him," she said. "That is, I knocked him unconscious. But I didn't injure him." She put her knife and fork down, and looked from Giddon to Oll. "I couldn't. He more than paid for his crime in gold. I couldn't hurt him."

They watched her for a moment. Giddon's eyes dropped to his plate. Oll cleared his throat. "Perhaps the Council work has put us in touch with our better natures," he said.

Katsa picked up her knife and fork, cut into her mutton, and thought about that. She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed, green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as the vessel of the king's fury.

But then, it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.

A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?

Perhaps she wouldn't recognize her own nature after all.

There were too many questions, and too few answers, at this dinner table in Giddon's castle. She would like to be traveling with Raffin, or Po, rather than Oll and Giddon; they would have answers, of one kind or another.

She must guard against using her Grace in anger. This was where her nature's struggle lay.

After dinner, she went to Giddon's archery range, hoping the thunk of arrows into a target would calm her mind. There, he found her.

She had wanted to be by herself. But when Giddon stepped out of the shadows, tall and quiet, she wished they were in a great hall with hundreds of people. A party even, she in a dress and horrible shoes. A dance. Any place other than alone with Giddon, where no one would stumble upon them and no one would interrupt.

"You're shooting arrows at a target in the dark," Giddon said.

She lowered her bow. She supposed this was one of his criticisms. "Yes," she said, for she could think of no other response.

"Are you as good a shot in the dark as you are in the light?"

"Yes," she said, and he smiled, which made her nervous. If he was going to be pleasant, then she feared where this was heading; she would much prefer him to be arrogant and critical, and unpleasant, if they must be alone together.

"There's nothing you cannot do, Katsa."

"Don't be absurd."

But he seemed determined not to argue. He smiled again and leaned against the wooden railing that separated her lane from the others. "What do you think will happen at Randa's court tomorrow?" he asked.

"Truly, I don't know," Katsa said. "Randa will be very angry."

"I don't like that you're protecting me from his anger, Katsa. I don't like it at all."

"I'm sorry, Giddon, as I'm sorry for the cut on your neck. Shall we return to the castle?" She lifted the strap of the quiver over her head, and set it on the ground. He watched her, quietly, and a small panic began to stir in her chest.

"You should let me protect you," he said.

"You can't protect me from the king. It would be fatal to you, and a waste of your energies. Let's go back to the castle."

"Marry me," he said, "and our marriage will protect you."

Well then, he had said it, as Po had predicted, and it hit her like one of Po's punches to the stomach. She didn't know where to look; she couldn't stand still. She put her hand to her head, she put it to the railing. She willed herself to think.

"Our marriage wouldn't protect me," she said. "Randa wouldn't pardon me simply because I married."

"But he would be more lenient," Giddon said. "Our engagement would offer him an alternative. It would be dangerous for him to try to punish you, and he knows that. If we say we're to be married, then he can send us away from court; he can send us here, and he'll be out of your reach, and you out of his. And there will be some pretense of good feeling between you."

And she would be married, and to Giddon. She would be his wife, the lady of his house. She'd be charged with entertaining his wretched guests. Expected to hire and dismiss his servants, based on their skill with a pastry, or some such nonsense. Expected to bear him children, and stay at home to love them. She would go to his bed at night, Giddon's bed, and lie with a man who considered a scratch to her face an affront to his person. A man who thought himself her protector – her protector when she could outduel him if she used a toothpick to his sword.

She breathed it away, breathed away the fury. He was a friend, and loyal to the Council. She wouldn't speak what she thought. She would speak what Raffin had told her to speak.

"Giddon," she said. "Surely you've heard I don't intend to marry."

"But would you refuse a suitable proposal? And you must admit, it seems a solution to your problem with the king."

"Giddon." He stood before her, his face even, his eyes warm. So confident. He didn't imagine she could refuse him. And perhaps that was forgivable, for perhaps no other woman would. "Giddon. You need a wife who will give you children. I've never wished children. You must marry a woman who wishes babies."

"You're not an unnatural woman, Katsa. You can fight as other women can't, but you're not so different from other women. You'll want babies. I'm certain of it."

She hadn't expected to have such an immediate opportunity to practice containing her temper. For he deserved a thumping, to knock his certainty out of his head and onto the ground where it belonged. "I can't marry you, Giddon. It's nothing to do with you. It's only to do with me. I won't marry, not anyone, and I won't bear any man children."

He stared at her then, and his face changed. She knew that look on Giddon's face, the sarcastic curl of his lip and the glint in his eye. He was beginning to hear her.

"I don't think you've considered what you're saying, Katsa. Do you expect ever to receive a more attractive proposal?"

"It's nothing to do with you, Giddon. It's only to do with me."

"Do you imagine there are others who would form an interest in a lady killer?"

"Giddon – "

"You're hoping the Lienid will ask for your hand." He pointed at her, his face mocking. "You prefer him, for he's a prince, and I'm only a lord."

Katsa threw her arms in the air. "Giddon, of all the preposterous – "

"He won't ask you," Giddon said, "and if he did you'd be a fool to accept. He's about as trustworthy as Murgon."

"Giddon, I assure you – "

"Nor is he honorable," Giddon said. "A man who fights you as he does is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug."

She froze. She stared at Giddon and didn't even see his finger jabbing in the air, his puffed-up face. Instead she saw Po, sitting on the floor of the practice room, using the exact words Giddon had just used. Before Giddon had used them. "Giddon. Have you spoken those words to Po?"

"Katsa, I've never even had a conversation with him when you were not present."

"What about to anyone else? Have you spoken those words to anyone else?"

"Of course not. If you think I waste my time – "

"Are you certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain. What does it matter? If he asked me, I would not be afraid to tell him what I think."

She stared at Giddon, disbelieving, defenseless against the realization that trickled into her mind and clicked into place. She put her hand to her throat. She couldn't catch her breath. She asked the question she felt she had to ask, and cringed against the answer she knew she would receive.

"Have you had those thoughts before? Had you thought those things, while you were in his presence?"

"That I don't trust him? That he's an opportunist and a thug? I think of it every time I look at him."

Giddon was practically spitting, but Katsa didn't see. She bent her knees and set her bow on the ground, slowly, deliberately. She stood, and turned away from him. She walked, one step at a time. She breathed in and breathed out and stared straight ahead.

"You're afraid I'll cause him offense," Giddon yelled after her, "your precious Lienid prince. And perhaps I will tell him my opinion. Perhaps he'll leave more quickly if I encourage – "

She didn't listen, she didn't hear. For there was too much noise inside her head. He had known Giddon's thoughts. And he had known her own, she knew he had. When she'd been angry, when she'd thought highly of him. Other times, too.

There must be other times, though her head screamed too much for her to think of them.

She had thought him a fighter, just a fighter. And in her foolishness, she had thought him perceptive. Had even admired him for his perceptiveness.

She, admire a mind reader.

She had trusted him. She had trusted him, and she should not have. He had misrepresented himself, misrepresented his Grace. And that was the same as if he'd lied.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She burst into Raffin's workrooms, and he looked up from his work, startled. "Where is he?" she demanded, and then she stopped in her tracks, because he was there, right there, sitting at the edge of Raffin's table, his jaw purple and his sleeves rolled up.

"There's something I must tell you, Katsa," he said.

"You're a mind reader," she said. "You're a mind reader, and you lied to me."

Raffin swore shortly and jumped up. He ran to the door behind her and pushed it closed.

Po's face flushed, but he held her gaze. "I'm not a mind reader," he said.

"And I'm not a fool," she yelled, "so stop lying to me. Tell me, what have you learned? What thoughts of mine have you stolen?"

"I'm not a mind reader," he said. "I sense people."

"And what's that supposed to mean? It's people's thoughts that you sense."

"No, Katsa. Listen. I sense people. Think of it as my night vision, Katsa, or the eyes in the back of my head you've accused me of having. I sense people when they're near me, thinking and feeling and moving around, their bodies, their physical energy. It is only – " He swallowed. "It is only when they're thinking about me that I also sense their thoughts."

"And that's not mind reading?" She screamed it so loudly that he flinched, but still he held her gaze.

"All right. It does involve some mind reading. But I can't do what you think I can do."

"You lied to me," she said. "I trusted you."

Raffin's soft voice broke through her distress. "Let him explain, Katsa."

She turned to Raffin, incredulous, flabbergasted that he should know the truth and still take Po's side. She whirled back on Po, who still dared to hold her eyes, as if he'd done nothing wrong, nothing completely and absolutely wrong.

"Please, Katsa," Po said. "Please hear me. I can't sit and listen in to whatever thoughts I want. I don't know what you think of Raffin, or what Raffin thinks of Bann, or whether Oll enjoys his dinner. You can be behind the door running in circles and thinking about how much you hate Randa, and all I'll know is that you're running in circles – until your thoughts turn to me. Only then do I know what you're feeling."

This was what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend. No. By a traitor pretending to be a friend. Such a wonderful friend he'd seemed, so sympathetic, so understanding – and no wonder, if he'd always known her thoughts, always known her feelings. The perfect pretense of friendship.

"No," he said. "No. I have lied, Katsa, but my friendship has not been a pretense. I've always been your true friend."

Even now he was reading her mind. "Stop it," she spat out. "Stop it. How dare you, you traitor, imposter, you..."

She couldn't find words strong enough. But his eyes dropped from hers now, miserably, and she saw that he felt her full meaning. She was cruelly glad his Grace communicated to him what she couldn't verbalize. He slumped against the table, his face contorted with unhappiness. His voice, when he spoke, toneless.

"Only two people have known this is my Grace: my mother and my grandfather. And now Raffin and you. My father doesn't know, nor my brothers. My mother and my grandfather forbade me to tell anyone, the moment I revealed it to them as a child."

Well. She would take care of that problem. For Giddon was right, though he couldn't have realized why. Po was not to be trusted. People must know, and she would tell everyone.

"If you do," Po said, "you'll take away any freedom I have. You'll ruin my life."

She looked at him then, but his image blurred behind tears that swelled into her eyes. She must leave. She must leave this room, because she wanted to hit him, as she had sworn she never would do. She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart that she wouldn't have given him if she'd known the truth.

"You lied to me," she said.

She turned and ran from the room.

Helda took her damp eyes, and her silence, in stride.

"I hope no one is ill, My Lady," she said. She sat beside Katsa's bath and worked soap through the knots in Katsa's hair.

"No one is ill."

"Then something has upset you," Helda said. "It'll be one of your young men."

One of her young men. One of her friends. Her list of friends was dwindling, from few to fewer. "I've disobeyed the king," she said. "He'll be very angry with me."

"Yes?" Helda said. "But that doesn't account for the pain in your eyes. That will be the doing of one of your young men."

Katsa said nothing. Everyone in this castle was a mind reader. Everyone could see through her, and she saw nothing.

"If the king is angry with you," Helda said, "and if you're having trouble with one of your young men, then we'll make you especially beautiful for the evening. You'll wear your red dress."

Katsa almost laughed at that bit of Helda logic, but the laugh got caught in her throat. She would leave the court after this night. For she didn't want to be here any longer, with her uncle's fury, Giddon's sarcastic, hurt pride, and, most of all, Po's betrayal.

Later, when Katsa was dressed and Helda grappled with her wet hair before the fire, there was a knock at her entrance. Katsa's heart flew into her throat, for it would be a steward, summoning her to her uncle; or even worse, Po, come to read her mind and hurt her again with his explanations and his excuses. But when Helda went to the door, she came back with Raffin.

"He's not the one I expected," Helda said. She folded her hands across her stomach and clucked.

Katsa pressed her fingers to her temples. "I must speak to him alone, Helda."

Helda left. Raffin sat on her bed and curled his legs up, as he had done when he was a child. As they both had done so many times, sitting together on her bed, talking and laughing. He didn't laugh now, and he didn't talk. He only sat, all arms and legs, and looked at her in her chair by the fire. His face kind and dear, and open with worry.

"That dress suits you, Kat," he said. "Your eyes are very bright."

"Helda imagines that a dress will solve all my problems," Katsa said.

"Your problems have multiplied since you last left the court. I spoke to Giddon."

"Giddon." His very name made her tired.

"Yes. He told me what happened with Lord Ellis. Honestly, Katsa. It's quite serious, isn't it? What will you do?"

"I don't know. I haven't decided."

"Honestly, Katsa."

"Why do you keep saying that? I suppose you think I should have tortured the fellow, for doing no wrong?"

"Of course not. You did right. Of course you did right."

"And the king won't control me anymore. I won't be his animal anymore."

"Kat." He shifted, and sighed. He looked at her closely. "I can see you've made up your mind. And you know I'll do anything in my power to stop his hand. I'm on your side in anything to do with Randa, always. It's just... it's just that..."

She knew. It was just that Randa paid little heed to his son the medicine maker. There was very little in Raffin's power to do, while his father lived.

"I'm worried for you, Kat," he said. "That's all. We all are. Giddon was quite desperate."

"Giddon." She sighed. "Giddon proposed marriage to me."

"Great hills. Before or after you saw Ellis?"

"After." She gestured impatiently. "Giddon thinks marriage is the solution to all my problems."

"Hmm. Well, how did it go?"

How did it go? She felt like laughing, though there was no humor in it. "It began badly and progressed to worse," she said, "and ended with my coming to the realization that Po is a mind reader. And a liar."

Raffin considered her for a moment. He started to speak, then stopped. His eyes were very gentle. "Dear Katsa," he finally said. "You've had a rough few days, what with Randa and Giddon and Po."

And Po the roughest, though all the danger might lie with Randa. Po the wound she would remove, if she could choose one to remove. Randa could never hurt her as Po had.

They sat quietly. The fire crackled beside her. The fire was a luxury; there was barely a chill to the air, but Helda had wanted her hair to dry more quickly, so they'd set the great logs burning. Her hair fell now in curls around her shoulders. She pushed it behind her ears and tied it into a knot.

"His Grace has been a secret since he was a child, Kat."

Here they came, then, the explanations and the rationalizations. She looked away from him and braced herself.

"His mother knew he'd only be used as a tool, if the truth came out. Imagine the uses of a child who can sense reactions to the things he says, or who knows what someone's doing on the other side of a wall. Imagine his uses when his father is the king. His mother knew he wouldn't be able to relate with people or form friendships, because no one would trust him. No one would want anything to do with him. Think about it, Katsa. Think about what that would be like."

She looked up at him then, her eyes on fire, and his face softened. "What a thing for me to say. Of course you don't need to imagine it."

No, for it was her reality. She hadn't had the luxury of hiding her Grace.

"We can't blame him for not telling us sooner," Raffin said. "To be honest, I'm touched that he told us at all. He told me just after you left. He has some ideas about the kidnapping, Kat."

Yes, as he must have ideas about a great many things he was in no position to know anything about. A mind reader could never be short on ideas. "What are his ideas?"

"Why don't you let him tell you about it?"

"I don't crave the company of a mind reader."

"He's leaving tomorrow, Kat."

She stared at him. "What do you mean, he's leaving?"

"He's leaving the court," Raffin said, "for good. He's going to Sunder, and then Monsea, possibly. He hasn't worked out the details."

Her eyes swam with tears. She seemed unable to control this strange water that flowed into her eyes. She stared at her hands, and one tear plopped into her palm.

"I think I'll send him," Raffin said, "to tell you about it."

He climbed from the bed and came to her. He bent down and kissed her forehead. "Dear Katsa," he said, and then he left the room.

She stared at the checked pattern of her marble floor and wondered how she could feel so desolate that her eyes filled with tears. She couldn't remember crying, not once in her life. Not until this fool Lienid had come to her court, and lied to her, and then announced that he was leaving.

He hovered just inside the doorway; he seemed unsure whether to come closer or keep his distance. She didn't know what she wanted, either; she only knew she wanted to remain calm and not look at him and not think any thoughts for him to steal. She stood, crossed into her dining room, went to the window, and looked out. The courtyard was empty, and yellow in the light of the lowering sun. She felt him moving into the entrance behind her.

"Forgive me, Katsa," he said. "I beg you to forgive me."

Well, and that was easily answered. She did not forgive him.

The trees in Randa's garden were still green, and some of the flowers still in bloom. But soon the leaves would turn and fall. The gardeners would come with their great rakes, and scrape the leaves from the marble floor, and carry them away in wheelbarrows. She didn't know where they carried them. To the vegetable gardens, she guessed, or to the fields. They were industrious, the gardeners.

She did not forgive him.

She heard him move a step closer. "How... how did you know?" he asked. "If you would tell me?"

She rested her forehead on the glass pane. "And why don't you use your Grace to find the answer to that?"

He paused. "I could," he said, "possibly, if you were thinking about it specifically. But you're not, and I can't wander around inside you and retrieve any information I want. Any more than I can stop my Grace from showing me things I don't want."

She didn't answer.

"Katsa, all I know right now is that you're angry, furious, from the top of your head to your toes; and that I've hurt you, and that you don't forgive me. Or trust me. That's all I know at this moment. And my Grace only confirms what I see with my own eyes."

She sighed sharply, and spoke into the windowpane. "Giddon told me he didn't trust you. And when he told me, he used the same words you'd used before, the same words exactly. And" – she waved her hand in the air – "there were other hints. But Giddon's words made it clear."

He was closer now. Leaning against the table, most likely, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on her back. She focused on the view outside. Two ladies crossed the courtyard below her, on each other's arms. The curls of their hair sat gathered at the tops of their heads and bobbed up and down.

"I haven't been very careful with you," he said. "Careful to hide it. I'd go so far as to say I've been careless at times." He paused, and his voice was quiet, as if he was talking down to his boots. "It's because I've wanted you to know."

And that did not absolve him. He had taken her thoughts without telling her, and he had wanted to tell her, and that did not begin to absolve him.

"I couldn't tell you, Katsa, not possibly," he said, and she swung around to face him.

"Stop it! Stop that! Stop responding to my thoughts!"

"I won't hide it from you, Katsa! I won't hide it anymore!"

He wasn't leaning against the table, hands in pockets. He was standing, clutching his hair. His face – she would not look at his face. She turned away, turned back to the window.

"I'm not going to hide it from you anymore, Katsa," he said again. "Please. Let me explain it. It's not as bad as you think."

"It's easy for you to say," she said. "You're not the one whose thoughts are not your own."

"Almost all of your thoughts are your own," he said. "My Grace only shows me how you stand in relation to me. Where you are nearby physically, and what you're doing; and any thoughts or feelings or instincts you have regarding me. I-I suppose it's meant to be a kind of self-preservation," he finished lamely. "Anyway, it's why I can fight you. I sense the movement of your body, without seeing it. And more to the point, I feel the energy of your intentions toward me. I know every move you intend to make against me, before you make it."

She almost couldn't breathe at that extraordinary statement. She wondered vaguely if this was how it felt to her victims, to be kicked in the chest.

"I know when someone wants to hurt me, and how," he said. "I know if a person looks on me kindly, or if he trusts me. I know if a person doesn't like me. I know when someone intends to deceive me."

"As you've deceived me," she said, "about being a mind reader."

He continued doggedly. "Yes, that's true. But all you've told me about your struggles with Randa, Katsa, I needed to hear from your mouth. All you've told me about Raffin, or Giddon. When I met you in Murgon's courtyard," he said. "Do you remember? When I met you, I didn't know why you were there. I couldn't look into your mind and know you were in the process of rescuing my grandfather from Murgon's dungeons. I wasn't even sure my grandfather was in the dungeons, for I hadn't gotten close enough to him to sense his physical presence yet. Nor had I spoken with Murgon; I'd learned nothing yet from Murgon's lies. I didn't know you'd attacked every guard in the castle. All I knew for sure was that you didn't know who I was, and you didn't know whether to trust me, but you didn't want to kill me, because I was Lienid, and possibly because of something to do with some other Lienid, though I couldn't be certain who, or how he factored into it. And also that you – I don't know how to explain it, but you felt trustworthy to me. That's all, that's all I knew. It was on the basis of that information that I decided to trust you."

"It must be convenient," she said bitterly, "to know if another person is trustworthy. We wouldn't be here now if I had that capability."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't tell you how sorry. I've hated not telling you. It's rankled me every day since we became friends."

"We are not friends." She whispered it into the glass of the window.

"If you're not my friend, then I have no friends."

"Friends don't lie," she said.

"Friends try to understand," he said. "How could I have become your friend without lying? How much have I risked to tell you and Raffin the truth? What would you have done differently, Katsa, if this were your Grace and your secret? Hidden yourself in a hole and dared to burden no one with your grievous friendship? I will have friends, Katsa. I will have a life, even though I carry this burden."

He stopped for a moment, his voice rough and choked, and Katsa fought against his distress, fought to keep it from touching her. She found that she was gripping the window frame very hard.

"You would have me friendless, Katsa," he finished quietly. "You would have my Grace control every aspect of my life and shut me off from every happiness."

She didn't want to hear these words, words that called to her sympathy, to her understanding. She who had hurt so many with her own Grace, and been reviled because of it. She who still struggled to keep her Grace from mastering her, and who, like him, had never asked for the power it gave her.

"Yes," he said, "I didn't ask for this. I would turn it off for you, if I could."

Rage then, rage again, because she couldn't even feel sympathy without him knowing it. This was madness. She could not comprehend the madness of this situation. How did his mother relate to him? Or his grandfather? How could anyone?

She took a breath and tried to consider it, piece by piece.

"Your fighting," she said, her eyes on the darkening courtyard. "You expect me to believe your fighting isn't Graced?"

"I'm an exceptional natural fighter," he said. "All of my brothers are. The royal family is well-known in Lienid for hand fighting. But my Grace – it's an enormous advantage in a fight, to anticipate every move your opponent makes against you. Combine with that my immediate sense of your body, a sense that goes beyond sight – you can understand why no one has ever beaten me, save you."

She thought about that and found she couldn't believe it. "But you're too good. You must have a fighting Grace as well. You couldn't fight me so well if you didn't."

"Katsa," he said, "think about it. You're five times the fighter I am. When we fight, you're holding back – don't tell me you aren't, because I know you are – and I'm not holding back, not a bit. And you can do anything you want to me, and I can't hurt you – "

"It hurts when you strike me – "

"It hurts you for only an instant, and besides, if I hit you it's only because you've let me, because you're too busy wrenching my arm out of its socket to care that I'm hitting you in the stomach. How long do you think it would take you to kill me, or break my bones, if you decided to?"

If she truly decided to?

He was right. If her purpose were to hurt him, to break his arm or his neck, she didn't think it would take her very long.

"When we fight," he said, "you go to great pains to win without hurting me. That you usually can is a mark of your phenomenal skill. I've never hurt you once, and believe me, I've tried."

"It's a front," she said. "The fighting is only a front."

"Yes. My mother seized on it the instant it became clear that I shared the skill of my brothers, and that my Grace magnified that skill."

"Why didn't you know I would strike you," she said, "in Murgon's courtyard?"

"I did know," he said, "but only in the last instant, and I didn't react quickly enough. Until that first strike, I didn't realize your speed. I'd never encountered the like of it before."

The mortar was cracking in the frame of the window. She pulled out a small chunk and rolled it between her fingers. "Does your Grace make mistakes? Or are you always right?"

He breathed; it almost sounded like a laugh. "It's not always exact. And it's always changing. I'm still growing into it. My sense of the physical is pretty reliable, as long as I'm not in an enormous crowd. I know where people are and what they're doing. But what they feel toward me – there's never been a time when I thought someone was lying and they weren't. Or a time when I thought someone intended to hit me and they didn't. But there are times when I'm not sure – when I have a sense of something but I'm not sure. Other people's feelings can be very... complicated, and difficult to understand."

She hadn't thought of that, that a person might be difficult to understand, even to a mind reader.

"I'm more sure of things now than I used to be," he said. "When I was a child I was rarely sure. These enormous waves of energy and feeling and thought were always crashing into me, and most of the time I was drowning in them. For one thing, it's taken me a long time to learn to distinguish between thoughts that matter and thoughts that don't. Thoughts that are just thoughts, fleeting, and thoughts that carry some kind of relevant intent. I've gotten much better at that, but my Grace still gives me things I've no idea what to do with."

It sounded ridiculous to her, thoroughly ridiculous. And she had thought her own Grace overwhelming. Alongside his, it seemed quite straightforward.

"It's hard to get a handle on it sometimes," he said, "my Grace."

She turned sideways for a moment. "Did you say that because I thought it?"

"No. I said it because I thought it."

She turned back to the window. "I thought it, too," she said. "Or something like it."

"Well," he said. "I imagine it's a feeling you would understand."

She sighed again. There were things about this she could understand, though she didn't want to. "How close do you have to be to someone, physically, for your Grace to sense them?"

"It differs. And it's changed over time."

"What do you mean?"

"If it's someone I know well," he said, "my range is broad. For strangers, I need to be closer. I knew when you neared the castle today; I knew when you burst into the courtyard and leaped out of your saddle, and I felt your anger strong and clear as you flew up to Raffin's rooms. My range for you is... broader than most."

It was darker outside now than it was in her dining room. She saw him, suddenly, in the reflection of the window. He was leaning back against the table, as she had pictured him before. His face, his shoulders, his arms sagged. Everything about him sagged. He was unhappy. He was looking down at his feet, but as she watched him he raised his eyes, and met hers in the glass. She felt the tears again, suddenly, and she grasped at something to say.

"Do you sense the presence of animals and plants? Rocks and dirt?"

"I'm leaving," he said, "tomorrow."

"Do you know when an animal is near?"

"Will you turn around," he said, "so I can see you while we speak?"

"Can you read my mind more easily when I'm facing you?"

"No. I'd just like to see you, Katsa. That's all."

His voice was soft, and sorry. He was sorry about all of this, sorry for his Grace. His Grace that was not his fault and that would have driven her away had he told her of it at the beginning.

She turned to face him.

"I didn't used to sense animals and plants or landscapes," he said, "but lately that's been changing. Sometimes I'll get a fuzzy sense of something that isn't human. If something moves, I might sense it. It's erratic."

Katsa watched his face.

"I'm going to Sunder," he said.

Katsa folded her arms across her stomach and said nothing.

"When Murgon questioned me after your rescue, it became obvious to me the object you'd taken was my grandfather. It became just as obvious Murgon had been keeping him for someone else. But I couldn't tell who, not without asking questions that would've given away what I knew."

She listened vaguely. She was tired, overwhelmed by too many things in the present to focus on the details of the kidnapping.

"I'm beginning to think it's something to do with Monsea," he said. "We've ruled out the Middluns, Wester, Nander, Estill, Sunder – and you'll remember, I've been to most of those courts. I know I was not lied to, except in Sunder. Lienid is not responsible, I'm sure of it."

She'd lost her fury, somewhere, as they'd talked. She didn't feel it anymore. She wished she did, because she preferred it to the emptiness that had settled in its place. She was sorry for everything that had changed now with Po. Sorry to see it all go.

"Katsa," he said. "I need you to listen to me."

She blinked and worked her mind back to the words he had spoken.

"But King Leck of Monsea is a kind man," she said. "He would have no reason."

"He might," he said, "though I don't know what it is. Something isn't right, Katsa. Some impressions I got from Murgon that I dismissed at the time, perhaps I dismissed them in error. And my father's sister, Queen Ashen, she wouldn't behave as you told me. She's so stoical, she is strong. She wouldn't have hysterics and lock herself and her child away from her husband. I swear to you, if you knew her..."

He stopped, his brow furrowed. He kicked the floor. "I've a feeling Monsea has something to do with it. I don't know if it's my Grace, or just instinct. Anyway, I'm going back to Sunder, to see what I can learn of it. Grandfather's doing better, but for his own sake I want him to stay hidden until I get to the bottom of this."

That was it, then. He was going to Sunder, to get to the bottom of it. And it was good that he was going, for she didn't want him in her head.

But neither did she want him to go. And he must know that, since she had thought it. And now, did he know that she knew that he knew, since she had thought that, too?

This was absurd, it was impossible. Being with him was impossible.

But still she didn't want him to go.

"I hoped you would come with me," he said, and she stared at him, openmouthed. "We'd make a good team. I don't even know where I'm going, for sure. But I hoped you would consider coming. If you're still my friend."

She couldn't think what to say. "Doesn't your Grace tell you if I'm your friend?"

"Do you know, yourself?"

She tried to think, but there was nothing in her mind. She knew only that she was numb and sad and completely without any clarity of feeling.

"I can't know your feelings," he said, "if you don't know them yourself "

He looked to the door suddenly; and then there was a knock, and a steward burst in without waiting for Katsa's response. At the sight of his pale, tight face, it all came flooding back to her. Randa. Randa wanted to see her, most likely wanted to kill her. Before this confusion with Po, she had disobeyed Randa.

"The king orders you to come before him at once, My Lady," the steward said. "Forgive me, My Lady. He says that if you don't, he'll send his entire guard to fetch you."

"Very well," Katsa said. "Tell him I'll go to him immediately."

"Thank you, My Lady." The steward turned and scampered away.

Katsa scowled after him. "His entire guard. What does he think they could do to me? I should've told the steward to send them, just for the amusement of it." She looked around the room. "I wonder if I should take a knife."

Po watched her with narrowed eyes. "What have you done? What's this about?"

"I've disobeyed him. He sent me to torture some poor, innocent lord, and I decided I wouldn't. Do you think I should take a knife?" She walked across to her weapons room.

He followed her. "To do what? What do you think will happen at this meeting?"

"I don't know, I don't know. Oh, Po, if he angers me, I fear I'll want to kill him. And what if he threatens me and gives me no choice?" She threw herself into a chair and dropped her head down on the Council table. How could she go to Randa now, of all times, when there was a whirlwind in her head? She would lose herself at the sound of his voice. She would do something dreadful.

Po slid into the chair next to her and sat sideways, facing her. "Katsa," he said. "Listen to me. You're the most powerful person I've ever met. You can do whatever you want, whatever you want in the world. No one can make you do anything, and your uncle can't touch you. The instant you walk into his presence, you have all the power. If you wish not to hurt him, Katsa, then you have only to choose not to."

"But what will I do?"

"You'll figure it out," Po said. "You only have to go in knowing what you won't do. You won't hurt him, you won't let him hurt you. You'll figure the rest out as you go along." She sighed into the table. She didn't think much of his plan. "It's the only possible plan, Katsa. You have the power to do whatever you want."

She sat up and turned to him. "You keep saying that, but it's not true," she said. "I don't have the power to stop you from sensing my thoughts."

He raised his eyebrows. "You could kill me."

"I couldn't," she said, "for you would know I meant to kill you, and you'd escape me. You'd stay far away from me, always."

"Ah, but I wouldn't."

"You would," she said, "if I wished to kill you."

"I wouldn't."

On that senseless note she threw her arms into the air. "Enough. Enough of this." She stood up from the table, and marched out of her apartments to answer the king's call.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Her first thought when she entered the throne room was to wish she'd brought a knife after all. Her second thought was to wish that Po's sense of bodies had extended to this room, so that he might have warned her of what was waiting for her here, and she might have known not to come.

A long, blue carpet led from the doors to Randa's throne. The throne was raised high on a platform of white marble. Randa sat high on his throne, blue robes and bright blue eyes. His face hard, his smile frozen. An archer to either side of him, an arrow notched in each bow and trained, as she entered the room, on her forehead, on the place just above her blue and green eyes. Two more archers, one in each far corner, also with arrows notched.

The king's guard lined the carpet on either side, three men deep, swords drawn and held at their sides. Randa usually kept a tenth this many guards in his throne room. Impressive; it was an impressive battalion Randa had arranged in preparation for her appearance. But as Katsa took stock of the room, it occurred to her that Birn or Drowden or Thigpen would have done better. It was good he was an unwarring king, for Randa was not so clever when it came to assembling battalions. This one, he'd assembled all wrong. Too few archers, and too many of these clumsy, armored, lumbering men who would trip all over each other if they tried to attack her. Tall, broad men who could shield her easily from an arrow's flight. And armed, all of them armed with swords, and each with a dagger in his opposite belt, swords and daggers she might as well be carrying on her own person, so easily could she snatch them from their owners. And the king himself raised high on a platform, a long blue carpet leading straight to him like a pathway to direct the flight of her blade.

If a fight erupted in this room, it would be a massacre.

Katsa stepped forward, her eyes and ears finely tuned to the archers. Randa's archers were good, but they were not Graced. Katsa spared a moment to drily pity the guards at her back, if this encounter came down to arrow dodging.

And then, when she'd progressed about halfway to the throne, her uncle called out. "Stop there. I've no wish for your closer company, Katsa." Her name sounded like steam hissing down the carpet when Randa spoke it. "You return to court today with no woman. No dowry. My underlord and my captain injured by your hand. What do you have to say for yourself?"

When a battalion of soldiers didn't trouble her, why should one voice rile her so? She forced herself to hold his contemptuous eyes. "I didn't agree with your order, Lord King."

"Can I possibly have heard you correctly? You didn't agree with my order?"

"No, Lord King."

Randa sat back, his smile twisted tighter now. "Charming," he said. "Charming, truly. Tell me, Katsa. What, precisely, possessed you with the notion that you are in a position to consider the king's orders? To think about them? To form opinions regarding them? Have I ever asked you to share your thoughts on anything?"

"No, Lord King."

"Have I ever encouraged you to bestow upon us your sage advice?"

"No, Lord King."

"Do you imagine it is your wit, your stunning intellect, that warrants your position in this court?"

And here was where Randa was clever. This was how he'd kept her a caged animal for so long. He knew the words to make her feel stupid and brutish and turn her into a dog.

Well, and if she must be a dog, at least she would no longer be in this man's cage. She would be her own, she would possess her own viciousness, and she would do what she liked with it. Even now, she felt her arms and legs beginning to thrill with readiness. She narrowed her eyes at the king. She could not keep the challenge out of her voice.

"And what exactly is the purpose of all these men, Uncle?"

Randa smiled blandly. "These men will attack if you make the slightest move. And at the end of this interview they'll accompany you to my dungeons."

"And do you imagine I'll go willingly to your dungeons?"

"I don't care if you go willingly or not."

"That's because you think these men could force me to go against my will."

"Katsa. Of course we all have the highest regard for your skill. But even you have no chance against two hundred guards and my best archers. The end of this conversation will see you either in my dungeons, or dead."

Katsa saw and heard everything in the room. The king and his archers; the arrows notched and aimed; the guards ready with their swords; her arms in red sleeves, her feet beneath red skirts. The room was still, completely still, excepting the breath of the men around her, and the tingling she felt inside her. She held her hands at her sides, away from her body, so that everyone could see them. She breathed around a thing that she recognized now as hatred. She hated this king. Her body was alive with it.

"Uncle," she said. "Let me explain what will happen the instant one of your men makes a move toward me. Let's say, for instance, one of your archers lets an arrow fly. You've not come to many of my practices, Uncle. You haven't seen me dodge arrows; but your archers have. If one of your archers releases an arrow, I'll drop to the floor. The arrow will doubtless hit one of your guards. The sword and the dagger of that guard will be in my hands before anyone in the room has time to realize what's happened. A fight will break out with the guards; but only seven or eight of them can surround me at once, Uncle, and seven or eight are nothing to me. As I kill the guards I'll take their daggers and begin throwing them into the hearts of your archers, who of course will have no sighting on me once the brawl with the guards has broken out. I'll get out of the room alive, Uncle; but most of the rest of you will be dead. Of course, this is only what will happen if I wait for one of your men to make a move. I could move first. I could attack a guard, steal his dagger, and hurl it into your chest this instant."

Randa's mouth was fixed into a sneer, but under this he had begun to tremble. A threat of death, given and received; and Katsa felt it ringing in her fingertips. And she saw that she could do it now, she could kill him right now. The disdain in his eyes would disappear, and his sneer would slide away. Her fingers itched, for she could do it now with the snatch of a dagger.

And then what? a small voice inside herself whispered; and Katsa caught her breath, stricken. And then what? A bloodbath, one she'd be lucky to escape. Raffin would become king, and his first inheritance would be the task of killing the murderer of his father. A charge he couldn't avoid if he meant to rule justly as the King of the Middluns; and a charge that would break his heart, and make her an enemy, and a stranger.

And Po would hear of it as he was leaving. He'd hear that she'd lost control and killed her uncle, that she'd caused her own exile and broken Raffin's spirit. He would return to Lienid and watch from his balcony as the sun dropped behind the sea; and he'd shake his head in the orange light and wonder why she'd allowed this to happen, when she held so much power in her hands.

Where is your faith in your power? the voice whispered now You don't have to shed blood. And Katsa saw what she was doing, here in this throne room. She saw Randa, pale, gripping the arms of his throne so hard it seemed he might break them. In a moment he would motion to his archers to strike, out of fear, out of the terror of waiting for her to make the first move.

Tears came to her eyes. Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder, and Randa didn't deserve it. And even though she wanted what the voice wanted, she didn't think she had the courage for it.

Po thinks you have the courage, the voice said fiercely. Pretend that you believe he's right. Believe him, for just a moment.

Pretend. Her fingers were screaming, but maybe she could pretend long enough to get out of this room.

Katsa raised burning eyes to the king. Her voice shook. "I'm leaving the court," she said. "Don't try to stop me. I promise you'll regret it if you do. Forget about me once I'm gone, for I won't consent to live like a tracked animal. I'm no longer yours to command."

His eyes were wide, and his mouth open. She turned and rushed down the long carpet, her ears tuned to the silence, readying her to spin around at the first hint of a bowstring or a sword. As she passed through her uncle's great doors she felt the weight of hundreds of astonished eyes on her back; and none of them knew she had been only a breath, a twitch, away from changing her mind.