“It seems a terrible amount of trouble.”

“Mostly everyone uses the road. The ropes are only for great shipments of things.”

“And the whole city sits up in the sky?”

Po broke himself another piece of bread and nodded.

“But why would they build a city in such a place?”

Po shrugged. “I suppose because it’s beautiful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can see forever from the edges of the city. The fields, the mountains and hills. To one side, the sea.”

“The sea,” Katsa said.

The sea put an end to her questions for a moment. Katsa had seen the lakes of Nander, some of them so wide she could barely make out the opposite shore. But she’d never seen the sea. She couldn’t imagine that much water. Nor could she imagine water that rocked, and crashed against the land, as she’d heard the sea did. She stared absently at the walls of Tealiff’s small room, and tried to think of it.

“You can see two of my brothers’ castles from the city,” Po said. “In the foothills of the mountains. The other castles are beyond the mountains, or too far to see.”

“How many castles are there?”

“Seven,” Po said, “just as there are seven sons.”

“Then one is yours.”

“The smallest one.”

“Do you mind that yours is the smallest?”

Po chose an apple from the bowl of fruit on the table. “I’m glad mine is the smallest, though my brothers don’t believe me when I say so.”

She didn’t blame them for disbelieving. She’d never heard of a man, not even her cousin, who didn’t want as large a holding as he could have. Giddon was always comparing his estate to that of his neighbors; and when Raffin listed his complaints about Thigpen, he never neglected to mention a certain disagreement over the precise location of the Middluns’ eastern border. She’d thought all men were like that. She’d thought she wasn’t like that because she wasn’t a man.

“I don’t have the ambitions of my brothers,” Po said. “I’ve never wanted a large holding. I’ve never wanted to be a king or an overlord.”

“No,” Katsa said, “nor have I. I’ve thanked the hills countless times that Raffin was born the son of Randa, and I only his niece, and his sister’s daughter at that.”

“My brothers want all that power,” he said. “They love to get wrapped up in the disputes of my father’s court. They actually revel in it. They love managing their own castles and their own cities. I do believe sometimes that they all wish to be king.”

He leaned back in his chair and absently ran his fingers along his sore shoulder.

“My castle doesn’t have a city,” he said. “It’s not far from a town, but the town governs itself. It doesn’t have a court, either. Really it’s just a great house that’ll be my home for the times when I’m not traveling.”

Katsa took an apple for herself. “You intend to travel.”