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."