“No. They’re dead. I never knew them.”

She took his right hand. And these? You don’t have enough fingers for the rings on this hand.

“These are for my brothers,” he said. “One for each. The thickest for the oldest and the thinnest for the youngest.”

Does this mean that your brothers all wear an even thinner ring, for you?

“That’s right, and my mother and grandfather, too, and my father.”

Why should yours be the smallest, just because you’re the youngest?

“That’s the way it is, Katsa. But the ring they wear for me is different from the others. It has a tiny inlaid gold stone, and a silver.”

For your eyes.

“Yes.”

It’s a special ring, for your Grace?

“The Lienid honor the Graced.”

Well, and that was a novel idea. She hadn’t known that anyone honored the Graced. You don’t wear rings for your brothers’ wives, or their children?

He smiled. “No, thankfully. But I would wear one for my own wife, and if I had children, I’d wear a ring for each. My mother has four brothers, four sisters, seven sons, two parents, and a husband. She wears nineteen rings.”

And that is absurd. How can she use her fingers?

He shrugged. “I’ve no difficulty using mine.” He raised her hands to his mouth then and kissed her knuckles.

You wouldn’t catch me wearing that many rings.

He laughed, turned her hands over, and kissed her palms and her wrists. “I wouldn’t catch you doing anything you didn’t want to do.”

And here was what was rapidly becoming her favorite aspect of Po’s Grace: He knew, without her telling him, the things she did want to do. He dropped to his knees before her now, with a smile that looked like mischief. His hand grazed her side and then pulled her closer. His lips brushed her neck. She caught her breath, forgot whatever retort she’d been about to form, and enjoyed the gold chill of his rings on her face and her body and every place that he touched.

“YOU BELIEVE Leck cuts those animals up himself,” she said to him one day while they were riding. “Don’t you?”

He glanced back at her. “I realize it’s a disgusting accusation. But yes, that’s what I believe. And I also wonder about the sickness that man spoke of.”

“You think he’s killing people off.”

Po shrugged and didn’t answer.

Katsa said, “Do you think Queen Ashen closed herself away from him because she figured out that he’s Graced?”

“I’ve wondered about that, too.”

“But how could she have figured it out? Shouldn’t she be completely under his spell?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he went too far with his abuses and she had a moment of mental clarity.” He raised a branch that hung in their path, and ducked under it. “Perhaps his Grace only works to a point.”

Or perhaps there was no Grace. Perhaps it was no more than a ridiculous notion they’d come up with in a desperate attempt to explain unexplainable circumstances.