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.