“And the condition?”

“Please,” he said. “Please, tell me what’s happened to my grandfather.”

There was something mixed in with the laughter in his voice, something that caught at Katsa’s throat. She didn’t have a grandfather. But perhaps this grandfather meant to the Lienid prince what Oll—or Helda or Raffin—meant to her.

“Katsa,” he said into the dirt. “I beg you to trust me, as I’ve trusted you.”

She held him down for just a moment, and then she let his arms go. She slid from his back and sat in the dirt beside him. She rested her chin in her palm, considering him.

“Why do you trust me,” she said, “when I left you lying on the floor of Murgon’s courtyard?”

He rolled over and sat up, groaning. He massaged his shoulder. “Because I woke up. You could’ve killed me, but you didn’t.” He touched his cheekbone and winced. “Your face is bleeding.” He stretched out his hand to her jaw, but she waved it aside and stood.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Come with me, Prince Greening.”

He heaved himself to his feet. “It’s Po.”

“Po?”

“My name. It’s Po.”

Katsa watched him for a moment as he swung his arms and tested out his shoulder joints. He pressed his side and groaned. His eye was swelling, and blackening, she thought, though it was hard to tell in the darkness. His sleeve was torn, and he was covered with dirt, absolutely smeared from head to foot. She knew she looked the same—worse, really, with her messy hair and bare feet—but it only made her smile.

“Come with me, Po,” she said. “I’ll take you to your grandfather.”

Chapter Nine

WHEN THEY WALKED into the light of Raffin’s workrooms, his blue head was bent over a bubbling flask. He added leaves to the flask from a potted plant at his elbow. He watched the leaves dissolve and muttered something at the result.

Katsa cleared her throat. Raffin looked up at them and blinked.

“I take it you’ve been getting to know each other,” he said. “It must’ve been a friendly fight, if you come to me together.”

“Are you alone?” Katsa asked.

“Yes, except for Bann, of course.”

“I’ve told the prince about his grandfather.”

Raffin looked from Katsa to Po and back to Katsa again. He raised his eyebrows.

“He’s safe,” Katsa said. “I’m sorry for not consulting you, Raff.”

“Kat,” Raffin said, “if you think he’s safe even after he’s bloodied your face and”—he glanced at her tattered dress—“rolled you around in a puddle of mud, then I believe you.”

Katsa smiled. “May we see him?”

“You may,” Raffin said. “And I have good news. He’s awake.”

RANDA’S CASTLE was full of secret inner passageways; it had been that way since its construction so many generations before. They were so plentiful that even Randa didn’t know of all of them—no one did, really, although Raffin had had the mind as a child to notice when two rooms came together in a way that seemed not to match. Katsa and Raffin had done a fair bit of exploring as children, Katsa keeping guard, so that anyone who came upon one of Raffin’s investigations would scuttle away at the sight of her small, glaring form. Raffin and Katsa had chosen their living quarters because a passageway connected them, and because another passageway connected Raffin to the science libraries.