UNFORTUNATELY, GRANDFATHER TEALIFF was not with the Lady Killer when she arrived the next day. She pounded into King Randa's courtyard as if she were a summer Lienid monsoon with the full force of a tsunami behind her. Po had been about to dress himself for dinner with King Randa but paused when he saw that the commotion was not a whole fleet of just-arrived ships but instead the Lady Killer and two of her companions astride horses. Po leaned against the railing for a better look.
She had changed out of the clothes she'd worn in Murgon's courtyard into nicer skirts fit for a lady of the court. Her hair, once hidden under a hood, was a brown mess of knots. Her arrival had triggered the court to become alive with stewards running for the horses and helping her companions down. Prince Raffin, with his hair dyed blue today, ran to greet her.
The Lady Killer was all smiles. She felt light and airy, completely unlike what she'd felt in Murgon's courtyard. She ruffled Prince Raffin's hair, laughing while her companions left. She turned to her saddlebags, and Po sensed the two talk about his Grace, his father, his brothers, and why he had come to Randa City. Interestingly enough, the Lady Killer brought up Po's grandfather. The subject was gone when a steward approached them and Prince Raffin walked back to the castle.
The steward felt shaky and doubtful as he conversed with the Lady Killer. She turned stiff after the steward left, dejected. She lifted her saddlebags and made a show of securing them on her shoulders, rather badly at that. Po snorted at the sight. With all the energy flying through her, he expected the Lady Killer to have taken her anger out on the steward.
"Kat!" Prince Raffin called suddenly from across the courtyard.
"What is it?" the Lady Killer replied.
"You look lost. Have you forgotten the way to your rooms?"
"I'm stalling," she confessed.
"How long will you be? I'd like to show you a couple of my new discoveries."
"I've been told to make myself pretty for dinner."
Out of all the things that could have been her downfall, the Lady Killer's was dinner. Po found it amusing… yet understandable. Sometimes, with his Grace, he felt the same.
"Well, in that case, you'll be ages!" Prince Raffin's laughter echoed but turned into a squeal when the Lady Killer threw a button with startling accuracy in his direction. Was that her Grace? Had she meant to kill him?
"I missed on purpose," she said, and Po knew she meant it.
"Show-off!" was Prince Raffin's reply. He wasn't the least bit afraid of her. "Come if you've time."
It was then that the Lady Killer turned directly to Po, and he sensed everything she saw and felt. The picture of him in her mind was as if he was looking into a mirror. His elbows leaned lazily against the railing. He saw his unbuttoned shirt showing his neck, the golden hoops in his ears, and the rings on his fingers. His hair and complexion were dark, like all Lienid, and, of course, Po still had the welt on his forehead from the first time he and the Lady Killer had fought.
She finally settled on his eyes. They were so strange and so bright. She couldn't believe that they didn't shine in the dark the last time they'd fought. She stared at him curiously, with one eye blue as the sky and the other green as the Middluns grasses, prettier than the stories had said. Po hadn't gotten a chance to see them clearly when they'd met in Murgon's courtyard.
He saw parts of himself in her as he studied her. Her danger, her unpredictability, her isolation. She had a dangerous Grace, and not many people of the court talked to her like Prince Raffin did. The stewards shook like leaves as they grabbed her horse from her, acting as if she would explode any second… but would her Grace do this, surely? Her Grace, which had been so controlled in Murgon's courtyard?
Po caught himself at the last second, sensing a steward coming to him about his newly-washed clothes. Po thanked the man and then returned to the Lady Killer, who hadn't moved a muscle. In fact, she was frozen in place.
Could a Lady Killer be frozen? Her emotions had calmed some as she stood there. Some of the women in Lienid around his age acted the same way, frozen in his gaze. Did she favor him? Did all it take was a fight in King Murgon's courtyard? She had refused to kill him in the courtyard, but he wasn't immune to another button throw with her kind of accuracy. He raised his eyebrows. Then he smirked, taunting her. Was she going to keep standing there?
She came out of her trance when Po nodded his princely greetings to her, and two words came clear in his mind as if she'd spoken them: cocky and arrogant. Po almost laughed out loud at the irony. She balled her fists, her mind a whirlwind once more. Po caught snippets of a game, that she would disappoint him by not playing along.
The rumors of the Lady Killer had said she was bloodthirsty, unstoppable, and ferocious. They said she killed anyone who so much as looked into her eyes… Yet all Po saw was a Lady Katsa, one who laughed with Prince Raffin, whose conflict was the king's dinner, and who didn't play games with strange Lienid princes. Po wanted to get to know her better. Not only for information on his grandfather but for the sake of his own curiosity.
Down in the courtyard, Lady Katsa hauled up her bags. She enunciated his name in her mind, furious, for it was the only insult she could come up with for a Lienid prince who could manage to hold her eyes with his. She stomped past King Randa's statue fountain and disappeared into the castle, thinking his eyes were burning a hole in the back of her head.
Poor Lady Katsa. If only she knew he'd been privy to everything she'd felt.
