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.

Chapter Four

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.