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 Tealiff 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.