“My father’s fifth son.”

“It’s a shame you hadn’t the animal sense then that you have now. You could’ve gone out and unearthed a mole, or a squirrel.”

“And lost myself on the way back to the hut,” he said. “Either that, or returned to a brother who’d think it was awfully suspicious that I’d managed to hunt in a blizzard.”

They climbed over dirt and grass that gave way at times to rock, climbed always with the mountain peaks rising before them. It felt good to be out of the forest, to climb, to move fast. The vast, empty sky glinted its sun onto her face and filled her lungs with air. She was content.

“Why have you never trusted your brothers with your Grace?”

“My mother forbade me when I was a child, absolutely forbade me to tell them. I hated to keep it from them—particularly Silvern, and Skye, who’s closest in age to me. But now I know my brothers as men, and I see my mother was right.”

“Why? Aren’t they to be trusted?”

“They are, with most things. But they’re all made of ambition, Katsa, every one of them, constantly playing off each other to gain favor with my father. As things stand now, I’m no threat to them—because I’m the youngest and have no ambition. And they respect me, for they know it would take all six of them together to beat me in a fight. But if they knew the truth of my Grace they’d try to use me. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves.”

“But you wouldn’t let them.”

“No, but then they’d resent me, and I’m not sure one of them wouldn’t give in to the temptation to tell his wife or his advisers. And my father would learn . . . It would all fall apart.”

They stopped at a trickle of water. Katsa drank some and washed her face. “Your mother had foresight.”

“Above all, she feared my father learning of it.” He lowered his flask into the water. “He’s not an unkind father. But it’s hard to be king. Men will trick power away from a king, however they can. I would’ve been too useful to him. He couldn’t have resisted using me—he simply couldn’t. And that was the greatest thing my mother feared.”

“Did he never want to use you as a fighter?”

“Certainly, and I’ve helped him. Not as you’ve helped Randa—my father isn’t the bully Randa is. But it was my mind that my mother feared him using. She wanted my mind to be my own, and not his.”

It didn’t seem right to Katsa that a mother should have to protect her child from its father. But she didn’t know much of mothers and fathers. She hadn’t had a mother or a father to protect her from Randa’s use. Perhaps rather than fathers, it was kings that were the danger.

“Your grandfather agreed that no one should know the truth of your Grace?”