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.

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.