“I told you. He gave it to me so that a Lienid ship would help us.”

“Nonsense. If that’s all he wanted, then why didn’t he give you the king’s ring, or the queen’s?”

“I don’t know,” Katsa said. “I don’t know the meanings of the rings, aside from which people they represent. This is the one he chose to give me.”

The captain humphed. Katsa clenched her teeth and prepared herself to say something very caustic, but Bitterblue’s voice stopped her.

“Po did give the ring to Katsa,” she said miserably. Her voice was thick, her body hunched over itself. “Po meant for her to have it. And as he didn’t explain what it meant, you should explain for him. Right now.”

The captain considered Bitterblue. Bitterblue raised her chin, grim and stubborn. The captain sighed. “It’s very rare for a Lienid to give away one of his rings, and almost unheard of for him to give away the ring of his own identity. To give that ring is to forsake his own identity. Princess Bitterblue, your lady has around her neck the ring of the Seventh Prince of Lienid. If Prince Po had truly given her that ring, it would mean that he’d abdicated his princehood. He’d no longer be a prince of Lienid. He’d make her a princess and give her his castle and his inheritance.”

Katsa stared. She pulled at a chair and sat down hard. “That can’t be.”

“Not one in a thousand Lienid gives that ring away,” the captain said. “Most wear it to their graves in the sea. But occasionally—if a woman is dying and wants a sister to take her place as the mother of her children, or if a dying shopkeeper wants his shop to go to a friend, or if a prince is dying and wants to change the line of succession—a Lienid will make a gift of that ring.” The captain turned to glare at Katsa. “The Lienid love their princes, most especially the youngest prince, the Graceling prince. To steal Prince Po’s ring would be considered a terrible crime.”

But Katsa was shaking her head, from confusion that Po should have done such a thing, and from fear of the word the captain kept saying over and over. Dying. Po wasn’t dying. “I don’t want it,” she said. “That he should give me this, and not explain—”

Bitterblue leaned against the table, her face gray, and moaned. “Katsa, don’t worry. You can be sure he had some reason.”

“But what reason would he have? His injuries weren’t so bad—”

“Katsa.” The child’s voice was patient but tired. “Think. He gave you the ring before he was injured. It wasn’t such a strange thing for him to do, knowing he might die in the fight.”

Katsa saw then what it meant; and her hand went to her throat. It was just like him. And now she was fighting back tears because it was just the sort of mad thing he would get it into his mind to do—mad and foolish, far too kind, and unnecessary, because he wasn’t going to die. “Why in the Middluns didn’t he tell me?”