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.