"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."