- Katsa's on the run again. She meets up with Oll and Giddon in a thicket and is annoyed to find them both asleep. Hello? We're on a secret mission here, people. She chastises them for being so and the three are off again.
- This time they're riding south toward the Estillan border, where King Randa thinks they've been headed all along. He's sent them there on official business—their rescue of Prince Tealiff was a secret side trip that Randa doesn't know about.
- They ride till evening then set up camp, have a modest supper, and begin to discuss the recent successes of the Council. We learn that Katsa is the brains behind the Council, that the Council is doing a lot of good in the seven kingdoms, and that friends of the Council are popping up all over the place. Go Katsa, go.
- After all the happy talk of the Council, Oll and Giddon fall asleep while Katsa lays awake, remembering one of the nastier missions her uncle, King Randa, sent her on when she was just ten. It seems one of Randa's underlords had been exposed as a spy, so he sent Katsa to publicly torture and kill the man. Did we mention that she was just ten years old at the time? Yeah, well, she did kill the guy, but she did it quick and clean, by snapping his neck in one movement. No torture, no public execution. King Randa wasn't amused—and as a result, his instructions for future missions became very explicit so that there would be no way for Katsa to purportedly misunderstand him again.
- After a while, Katsa stopped trying to defy him because defiance "became too difficult to imagine" (3.37).
- Despite the grisly aspects of Katsa's missions on behalf of Randa, she has gained a lot of knowledge about the world—knowledge that inspired her to create the Council in an attempt to aid people instead of injuring them.
- With Raffin's and Oll's help, Katsa formed the Council and began rescuing folks: intercepting looters and sending them scurrying, rescuing children enslaved in mines… typical heroic stuff. Eventually the movement grew until other people began carrying out missions in the name of the Council.
- While proud of her work with the Council, Katsa is also nervous that with the network becoming so big, just one person talking out of turn could cause it all to fall apart. This thought makes her wonder again why she didn't kill that strange Lienid Graceling in Murgon's Court—she has no idea who he is or if she can trust him, and that has her a bit on edge.
- But not too on edge to sleep. Zzzzz.