The swimming lessons took p the opposite side of Thornfield from the culvert they inteo use, directly in front of the gatehouse.

  The first time the pirate crossed the bead stepped into the surf, the patrols raised the arm. Never mind that the former prince apanied him and their sy roommate lounged on the beach, winging shells at them. The fner was doing something strahe masters had to be notified.

  “The keep at the Lake Onicas Hunting Lodge is half uer in the flood season and a quarter uer out of it,” Izak supplied smoothly when they were dragged before the grandmaster. “I’ve never learo swim, because I hought I’d be the one defending it. Ret events, however, make it clear that it would be me and my future master if I take an i.”

  The lessons were allowed to tinue.

  As always, Izak was a fast learner, and given the urgency of this particur focus, he was even more dedicated to Twenty-six’s lessons than he was to most subjects.

  The same could not be said for Izak’s nightly training. He showed the same apathy for sword work at Thorhat he’d shown growing up. Vorino had allowed him to give up the art entirely, since he couldn’t force Izak to make an effort and si had been assumed that the elder prince would never o handle a bde unless he wao.

  Thornfield’s ons masters had no iion of allowing him to give up, however. The twins watched Four’s zy bdework night in and night out. When backed into a er, the prince could defend himself, but he never put forth more effort than he absolutely had to to avoid injury.

  Saint Daven and Saint Galen switched Four from fal to rapier to saber to longsword to bastard sword, searg for something that would get his blood pumping. The prince’s ckadaisical attitude only worsened. He was skilled enough to get by with any sword, but he had no i in honing that mediocrity into something more.

  The first-years had been at Thornfield for a little over a month when Fifteen, a rusti the Sharsena Hills, was run through by Forty-three, a wild-eyed low street boy.

  Saint Galen heard the cry and looked up from helping a senior with a plicated parry. Across the bailey, a double-edged shortsword wobbled in Fifteen’s gut. The low street boy shrieked and stepped on his practice partner’s chest, trying to yank the sword out.

  The ons master darted through the crowd of swinging swords. “Nine, go get Healer Prime!”

  At the urgen Saint Galen’s voice, the runt bolted toward the healer’s shed like a loosed arrow.

  “Stop that!” Four, who had been sparring nearby, dropped his rapier and shoved Forty-three away from the impaled rustic. “You’re making it worse.”

  Saint Galen skidded to a stop beside Fifteen. Cursing, he crouched and iing the injury. A hole i that big would most likely prove beyond the help of blood magic. Smelled as if it had pierced the bowel, probably from Forty-three jerking the bde all over the p his panic.

  The prince was still standing over them, holding the wild-eyed low street boy back. Four’s face was nearly as gray and bloodless as the dying man’s.

  “Over here!” Nine rushed ba, nearly bowling the other two over.

  “Stand aside!” Healer Prime bellowed. A pair of underlings pced a stretcher in the dirt beside the farm boy.

  With swift efficy, Fifteen was whisked away to the healer’s shed, where he would be given a series of drinks to hold the pain at bay while Prime decided whether he could be healed. If not, he would be mercifully put out of his misery to spare him the slow, sufferih of a gut wound.

  “It’s over,” Saint Galen told the shocked crowd of students. In his opinion, the only thing to do when disaster struck was to keep moving before you realized how much it hurt. “Get back to your training. Move!”

  Fifteen was given the coup de grace the following evening.

  The tragedy brought unintended enlighte, however. Saint Galen had seen a cra the prince’s bored, zy veneer.

  To test his theory, Saint Galen tried a actic with Izak that night.

  He paired off the rest of the students, keeping the experience level suffitly widened in the early drills to make sure the older and more experieudents could teach their younger terparts.

  Except for Four, who he took aside to work with alone.

  Using a longsword to match the ohe prince ractig with that night, Saint Galen pushed and bullied the prince around the bailey, not giving him an inch. Four’s cool boredom with the training was gone, repced by a twisted expression somewhere between stipation and disquiet.

  “e on, you chi gizzard,” Saint Galen shwag Four’s pitiful blocks aside. “Hit me like you mean it. What are you, afraid of me? Hit me like I’ll leave you alone if you y me open. Stick a sword in my gut, and I’ll let you have the rest of the night off.”

  Four winced, his face turning ashen again.

  Saint Galen had to back the prince up against a wall before he would do any ving fighting, and evehe strikes seemed to be inteo hold the older man off rather than actually make tact.

  Having seen all he’d o, the ons master cracked the back of Izak’s hand with the pommel of his sword, snapping a few bones and knog the prince’s bde to the dirt.

  “Heal that up and practice with your off-hand for the rest of the night.” A broken bone would be the work of only a day or two for someone born with the royal blood magic.

  “Four’s scared he’s going to hurt someone,” Saint Galen told his twihat day. “And as zy as he is about training, he probably will at some point. He’s got just enough skill get by for now, but the rest of his css is going to leave him behind by the end of the year.”

  “He needs a on he doesn’t already think he knows,” Saint Daven said. “Eveer if it puts distaween him and his oppo, makes it feel less deadly.”

  The night, Saint Galen showed up to the bailey with a swordstaff.

  “Fet over here.” The ons master held out the staff, dispying the long, spearlike wooden shaft and thick, two-edged bde attached to the end. “Ever used one of these before?”

  The bde itted with age everywhere except for the edges, which Master Smith had whetted just before sunup for him. Swordstaves had fallen out of fashion along with their less deadly cousins, the quarterstaves. There might be a shepherd or two out in the far-flung reaches of the kingdom who still kept a good long stick with a bde on the end for dyre and bears, but it had been a while sihe on had seen any use at Thornfield.

  “Is it some sort of harvesting tool?” Fuessed.

  “With that haft?”

  The prince smirked, clearly ahat he didn’t already know the answer. “I’ve seen farmer’s scythes with hawice that long. Halberd?”

  “Swordstaff.” Saint Galen handed over the on. “Should keep yetting blood on your skirts.”

  With the butt on the dirt, the shaft came up to Four’s cheek, the bde topping out a few inches over his head. It would extend his reach by aire body length at its farthest, which was nothing to ugh at sidering the prince was already taller, with greater reach, than most of the students at Thornfield.

  It was also a on Izak had rained with before and whione of his skills trao. He would have to learn airely different style of fighting to wield the staff. The switch would require all his attention just to keep up with the rest of his css, who already had a month’s practice with their bdes.

  In just a few weeks, Four’s progress with the swordstaff proved the impulse was the right one. He trained harder than he ever had before, put forth more effort.

  He never said it, but Saint Galen could see that the prince felt right with the staff in his hands. He wielded it like a part of his body that he’d only just discovered. The way Gale wielded a whip or Dav wielded a hatchet sword.

  Perhaps staves would e bato fashion.

  ***

  Hazing was a major portion of life for Thornfield’s first-years. Everything from beien by older students to being tripped during the meal service or being thrown into the pig wallow out back of the stables.

  Izak ughed off most of the abuse, believing his tormenters would grow bored with him if he treated their attacks as nothing more than a good joke. Bruises and split lips healed fast enough with blood magid though he absolutely hated getting dirty, he gave it his best effort o let that show, knowing that would only spur the uppercssmen’s pranks to more disgustihs.

  It was in hat the uppercssmen found an ued ally. The sy boy joined in on the hazing with bloodthirsty enthusiasm, thrashing other first-years along with the older students and cag at the multitude of embarrassments visited upon them. Nine even offered suggestions when fourth-years too mature for or indifferent to the traditional hazing would have let off a potential victim off without i. The little brat was eerily good at knowing what would most disfit a person.

  “Dunk his fa the muck barrow!” Nine hooted gleefully. “Four hates getting dirty!”

  Passing only steps away from said barrow, just outside the stables, Izak’s easy grin froze solid.

  “Nine, I swear to the strong gods—”

  “Get it on his hands, too!” Nine advised. “He gets all sortsa riled when his hands is filthed up!”

  “I know where you sleep, you little parasite!”

  Izak ended up covered in mao the elbow, but, thankfully, the students doing the dunking didn’t have the guts to shove the son of the king in head-first.

  After Izak’s secret disgust fetting dirty slip, the word passed around the school, and the prince found himself regurly spttered with handfuls of dung, mud, and rotten food. When one only had two pairs of clothing to alterween undering days, getting dirty was infuriating.

  Thus he found himself on the beach, washing dung from his shirt in the surf while he waited for Twenty-six to show for the daily swim lesson.

  “Let me sleep in your bunk and I’ll tell ’em you never did care about no dirt,” Nine said.

  “I would rather take a mule kiy hers.” Izak scrubbed at the greenish-brown stain. He’d seen washerwomen doing this before and always thought it looked quaint and peaceful. It wasn’t, especially not when the cause of ooil kept pestering ohe damage is done anyway. First foundation id remains.”

  opped hug starfish and shells into the o. “Remains what?”

  “Forever. It’s a proverb. It means people believe the first thing they hear about you and won’t listen to anything else, even if it’s true.”

  “What’s a foundation?”

  “The base you build everything else on top of, like the initial piece of stru for a pace uild hall.”

  Nine sidered that for nearly a full sed, which, from what Izak had seen, was a long time for the kid to think about any ohing.

  He shrugged bony shoulders. “So you just make ’em into closes.”

  “What?”

  “Closes. You know closes! When they build a new city on top a’ the old streets and close ’em all in?” He demonstrated by stag a sand dolr on a shell on another shell. “That’s what you do with old foundations. Make ’em into closes.”

  It wasn’t bad advice; it just came from a bad advisor.

  Izak wrung out his shirt. “And how exactly do I do that?”

  Twenty-six came through the open gatehouse to join them. He had escaped the dung-throwers in the bailey but had an impressive goose egg growing over his left brow. Attempts at hazing on the pirate usually devolved into beatings, however they began.

  The patrols oehouse watched him cross the beach, still alert for treachery despite the fact that it had been over a month siheir first lesson.

  “We tell ’em Twenty-six here hates gettin’ his drawers dropped in front a’ folks,” the runt suggested cheerfully. “Them big ds’ll fet all about how prissy you are and take to botherin’ him instead.”

  “How well do you breathe uer, wenty-six asked without looking away from the o.

  “He does have a knack for finding that one nerve and striking it with all his might, doesn’t he?” Izak assessed his work. The stain wasn’t ing out. Whichever horse, mule, had made it must have eaten a troughful of dye. “Do you know what loyalty is, Nine?”

  “’Course I do!” humped a fist on his narrow chest. “I got loyalty to the marrow, me. Ohirty-nine sheriffs id a trap for me and dragged me into their torture chamber—” Thirty-nine was the boy’s new highest number; he was having trouble mastering forty. “—but no matter how they agonized me, I never did tell ’em my sister Pretty was the one who ughed at that fancy dy ireet. All us close-rats got gobs of loyalty.”

  “That must be here wasn’t much loyalty where I came from.” Izak id his shirt out to dry on a log of driftwood, then began stripping down to his smallclothes. “I tried to show some to my siblings, but I’m not sure whether it did any good. I hope it did.” Of course, hoping was about as useful as praying to the Bsphemous One. “But the former captain of the Royal Thorns told me ohat loyalty was the most important part of his job. Loyalty to his king and to his brothers-in-arms.”

  “Whose arms was his brothers in?”

  “‘Brothers-in-arms’ means the men he fought alongside, the other Thrafted to the king. The point is he would never have betrayed his brothers to the enemy. Just like you didn’t betray your sister.”

  Nine’s eyes were huge. “That’s bad medie, betrayin’. It heaps up on whoever does it.”

  “It’s disloyalty,” Izak agreed. “Like what you did, telling those fourth-years that I didn’t like getting muddy.”

  “You lyin’, rotten fish guts!” Nine roared. “I ain’t never betrayed nobody, me!”

  “Then what do you call it? You betrayed information to our enemy. Light, Nine, you even suggested we both betray Twenty-six, and you’re not uorture from anyone! We’re brothers, Nine—you, me, and Twenty-six—brother Thorns, brothers-in-arms, brother roommates—and you betrayed us.”

  Tears of fury and shame streaked the younger boy’s red face. A sudden wail erupted from Nine, making Twenty-six shift unfortably and turn away to finish stripping down to his smallclothes.

  Izak ged. He hadn’t expected the bloodthirsty little runt to take the indit that hard.

  “I never meant to be a betrayer, me!” hrew his bony arms around Izak’s neck, smearing snot and tears on his chest. “Don’t hold it to my at, Four! Swear you won’t!”

  Before Izak could promise and pry the boy off him, Twenty-six broke in.

  “What will it profit him to make an oath if you’re only going to betray him again?”

  “I never will, may the orant strike me dead ireet if I’m a-lying! Now you swear, Four!”

  “You’re fiven,” Izak said, finally breaking the boy’s armlock around his throat and shoving the oozing runt onto his backside in the sand. “For Teikru’s sake, Nine.”

  “Swear you don’t hold it to my at!”

  “I swear I don’t hold it to your at.”

  Nine sniffled. “May the orant strike you dead ireet if you’re a-lying?”

  “All that and more,” Izak said. Then he smacked Nine on the back of the head. “Just stop blubbering. Light.”

  ***

  Nine had never had brothers before.

  A sister was good, and you couldn’t get a better ohay, but she took a lot of taking care of. Just look at how long it was going to take to bee a Thorn a gold and buy an uphill pt to get her out of the Closes.

  Brothers like Four and Twenty-six were good medie as far as Nine was ed. Sometimes they were plumb fools, but mostly they took care of themselves.

  The number nine was good medie, too. You only had to hear it to know that.

  Nine, Four, Twenty-six, and Pretty. Taking care of a sister would be a lot easier between three brothers.

  ***

  “How did you know that bilge rat would care about loyalty arayal?” Twenty-six asked as he and Izak waded through the waves to the deeper water.

  Izak shrugged. “I didn’t. He’s always hanging around us, though, trying to do what we do. He must see us as something besides shields from a beating when the older students e around.”

  “It was a wise course of a. He will do anything you say now.”

  Something squirmed in Izak’s gut. “I didn’t mean it as merary as all that.”

  “But you do not believe in the worth of honor, so you ’t believe in the worth of loyalty.”

  “Of course I do.” Izak spped at the wave buffeting his stomach. “I wasn’t lying to Nine or maniputing him.” Burn it all, why should he have to expin himself? Any direct desdant of Khi was assumed to be a grand puppet master—ahat was something Izak had never aspired to. “A brother owes loyalty to his siblings.” He made the effort and was able to ugh. “A man who would murder his brother is beh pt.”

  Twenty-six had stopped moving forward. “Murder?”

  Well. How was that for a slip of the tongue?

  “It’s a short step from betrayal to murder.” Izak turned back to survey the walls and ge the subject. The patrol oehouse watched them as if they would be capable of intervening if Izak and Twenty-six suddenly turail and swam out to sea. “Do you think our lessons are accepted enough yet to try a day out?”

  Twenty-six shook his head. “You are still not skilled or strong enough to swim as far as the dunes around the thornknife graveyard.”

  “And I suppose the only cure for that is practid exertion.” Izak sighed with exaggerated sadness, thinking again of the soft skin waiting for him on the opposite end of the spit of sand. Miles away, a might as well be oher side of the world. “Well the’s get to it.”