Stop him. She would stop him, for he wasn’t thinking. She took his forearms, and gripped them tightly. She thought his name into his head. Po. Stop. Think, she thought into his mind, just as he had said to her. Think. He began to breathe out, as slowly as he’d breathed in. His eyes refocused and he saw her.

He turned around and stood beside her. He faced the two men; it didn’t even matter which of them had spoken.

“Get out.” His voice was very quiet.

“We would have our payment—”

Po took a step toward the men, and they stepped back. He held his arms at his sides with a casual calmness that didn’t fool anyone in the room. “Have you the slightest notion to whom you’re speaking?” he asked. “Do you imagine you’ll receive a coin of my money, when you’ve spoken this way? You’re lucky I let you go without knocking your teeth from your mouths.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t?” Katsa said, looking into the eyes of each man, one after the other. “I’d like to do something to discourage them from touching the innkeeper’s daughter.”

“We won’t,” one of them gasped. “We won’t touch anyone, swear it.

“You’ll be sorry if you do,” she said. “Sorry for the rest of your short, wretched lives.”

“We won’t, My Lady. We won’t.” They backed to the door, their faces white, their smirks vanished now. “It was only a joke, My Lady, I swear it.”

“Get out,” Po said. “Your payment is that we won’t kill you for your insults.”

The men scrambled from the room. Po slammed the door behind them. Then he leaned his back against the door and slid down until he sat on the floor. He rubbed his face with his hands and heaved a deep sigh.

Katsa took a candle from the table and came to crouch before him. She tried to measure his tiredness and his anger, in the bend of his head and the hardness of his shoulders. He dropped his hands from his face and rested his head against the door. He watched her face for a moment.

“I truly thought I might hurt that man,” he said, “very badly.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of such temper.”

“Apparently I am.”

“Po,” Katsa said, as a thought occurred to her. “How did you know I intended to attack them? My intentions were toward them, not you.”

“Yes, but my sense of your energy heightened suddenly, and I know you well enough to guess when you’re likely to take a swing at someone.” He half-smiled, tiredly. “No one could ever accuse you of being inconsistent.”

She snorted. She sat on the floor before him and crossed her legs. “And now will you tell me what you learned from them?”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “What I learned. To start with, other than that fellow in the corner, they barely spoke a true word. It was a game. They wanted to trick us into paying them for false information. To get back at us, for the incident in the eating room.”