“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She turned to the king, the only man in the room who wasn’t on his feet. “Forgive me, Lord King,” she said. “It’s nothing. Please, sit down.” She waved her hand around the tables. “Please.”

Slowly, the gentlemen sat, and the voices picked up again. The king’s laugh rang out, directed at her, she was sure. Katsa turned to Lord Davit. “Please excuse me, My Lord.” She turned to Giddon, whose hand still grasped her elbow. “Let go, Giddon. I want to take a walk outside.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said. He started to rise, but at the warning in her eyes he sat back again. “Very well, Katsa, do what you will.”

There was an edge to his voice. She had probably been rude, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she leave this room and go to a place where she couldn’t hear the drone of her uncle’s voice. She turned, careful not to catch the eyes of the Lienid. She forced herself to walk slowly, calmly, to the doorway at the foot of the room. Once through the doorway, she ran.

She ran through corridors, around corners, past servants who flattened themselves trembling against walls as she flew by. Finally she burst into the darkness of the courtyard.

She crossed the marble floor, pulling pins from her hair. She sighed as her curls fell around her shoulders and the tension left her scalp. It was the hairpins, and the dress, and the shoes that pinched her feet. It was having to hold her head still and sit straight, it was the infuriating earrings that brushed against her neck. That was why she couldn’t stand to spend one moment longer at her uncle’s fine dinner. She took off her earrings and hurled them into her uncle’s fountain. She didn’t care who found them.

But that was no good, because then people would talk. The entire court would speculate about what it meant, that she’d thrown her earrings into her uncle’s fountain.

Katsa kicked off her shoes, hitched up her skirt, and climbed into the fountain, sighing as the cold water ran between her toes and lapped at her ankles. It was a great improvement over her shoes. She would not put them on again tonight.

She waded out to the glimmers she saw in the water and retrieved her earrings. She dried them on her skirt, dropped them into the bodice of her dress for safekeeping, and stood in the fountain, enjoying the coolness enveloping her feet, the drifting air of the courtyard, the night noises—until a sound from inside reminded her of how much the court would talk if she were found wading, barefoot and wild haired, in King Randa’s fountain. They would think her mad.

And perhaps she was mad.

A light shone from Raffin’s workrooms, but it wasn’t his company she sought after all. She didn’t want to sit and talk. She wanted to move. Movement would stop the whirring of her mind.