“It’s a bit awkward, isn’t it?” Oll said, when they stopped at midday to rest. “For the king to have asked you to punish your neighbor?”

“It is awkward,” Giddon said. “Lord Ellis is a good neighbor. I can’t imagine what has possessed him to create this trouble with Randa.”

“Well, he’s protecting his daughters,” Oll said. “No man can fault him for that. It’s Ellis’s bad luck that it puts him at odds with the king.”

Randa had made a deal with a Nanderan underlord. The underlord couldn’t attract a wife, because his holding was in the south-central region of Nander, directly in the path of Westeran and Estillan raiding parties. It was a dangerous place, especially for a woman. And it was a desolate holding, without even sufficient servants, for the raiders had killed and stolen so many. The underlord was desperate for a wife, so desperate that he was willing to forgo her dowry. King Randa had offered to take the trouble to find him a bride, on the condition that her dowry went to Randa.

Lord Ellis had two daughters of marriageable age. Two daughters, and two very great dowries. Randa had ordered Ellis to choose which daughter he would prefer to send as a bride to Nander. “Choose the daughter who is stronger in spirit,” Randa had written, “for it is not a match for the weakhearted.”

Lord Ellis had refused to choose either daughter. “Both of my daughters are strong in spirit,” he wrote to the king, “but I will send neither to the wastelands of Nander. The king has greater power than any, but I do not think he has the power to force an unsuitable marriage for his own convenience.”

Katsa had gasped when Raffin told her what Lord Ellis said in his letter. He was a brave man, as brave as any Randa had come up against. Randa wanted Giddon to talk to Ellis, and if talk didn’t work, he wanted Katsa to hurt Ellis—in the presence of his daughters, so that one of them would step forward and offer herself to the marriage to protect her father. Randa expected them to return to his court with one or the other of the daughters, and her dowry.

“This is a gruesome task we’re asked to perform,” Oll said. “Even without Ellis being your neighbor, it’s gruesome.”

“It is,” Giddon said. “But I see no way around it.”

They sat on an outcropping of stone and ate bread and fruit. Katsa watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place and then another. It rose and fell and rose again. It flowed, like water.

“Is this what the sea is like?” Katsa asked, and they both turned to her, surprised. “Does the sea move the way this grass moves?”

“It is like this, My Lady,” Oll said, “but different. The sea makes rushing noises, and it’s gray and cold. But it does move a bit like this.”