Nine uhe twin swords across the room. They crashed into the wall and bounced across the stone floor, raising an almighty racket and waking Four and Twenty-six.

  “What in the name of Teikru is wrong with you!” Four bellowed.

  The pirate scum stopped his tossing and turning to gre at oo.

  “Ain’t me what’s wrong!” Nine grabbed the bedframe, hopped up, and flopped onto the straw tick. The wood groaned and crackled under his weight. “And I ain’t going to no more extra lessons, her!”

  Nine folded ko chest and threw a vicious kick at the stone ceiling over the bed.

  That was the st abuse the bunk would take. The bolts tore free of the aging wood, and the bed colpsed.

  Four rolled onto the floor, narrowly missing being crushed by debris.

  The impa the bunk below fttened Nine’s lungs. The former Brat rolled around in the splintered wood, gasping for air.

  Finally, mercifully, breath returned in a huge whoop. Nine curled into a ball, fighting hot, angry, embarrassed tears.

  Four blew out a long breath. “I knew you were getting too fat for that rickety bundle of sticks.”

  “Well, I hate you. Didja know that?”

  That made Fh.

  “Sounds like you need a trip to the vilge, runt.” He reached out a hand to help Nine up off the cracked boards and torn straw tick.

  Nine almost hocked a wad into his palm. But they were brothers. And anyways, it was that ranty ol’ crow of a master who was the real problem, always g on the same stuff, squawking like Nine was dumb as a post and half as slow as one.

  “It’s nearly dusk,” Twenty-six said. “You ake it to the vilge and back before training begins for the night.”

  “Anyhow, I never run away scairt, no matter who’s took after me.” Nine snatched Four’s hand and was hauled clear of the wreckage. “You’re my brothers, ain’t you both?”

  “Of course we are,” Four answered.

  “And brothers are loyal. That means you gotta help me.”

  Four shrugged. “I suppose.”

  Twenty-six’s eyes narrowed. “Help with what?”

  ***

  The following day, Nine was already in the bailey waiting for his extra lessons when Saint Daven arrived.

  “I’m a-calling for a wager,” the boy said.

  Saint Daven snorted. “You don’t have anything I want.”

  “Who’s g what you want? I’m wagering if’n I beat you today, I get to stop all these extra lessons ft.”

  “No.”

  “’Til the end of the year, then.”

  “No.”

  “End of the month.”

  Saint Daven raised an eyebrow. “Do you think I like spending my days yelling at an ungrateful, zy brat any more than you enjoy ign me?”

  “I ain’t worried about what you like,” the boy sneered. “You in this wager or ain’t ya?”

  Saint Daven took a defensive pose. “Beat me before sundown and you have a week off.”

  Nine raised his twin swords to an attack posture. The boy was already fading to nothingness, bright sunlight filtering through his fad chest.

  “Two weeks.” Nine was gone, but a faint shadow remained beh him.

  This was going to be a repeat of the day before.

  “Fine,” Saint Daven agreed. “Two weeks it is.”

  Nine lost their first battle in much the same way he’d lost on the previous day. His fighting was more skillful—pig his attacks, defending when necessary—but he still lost. Three times in a row, he lost.

  “The wager ain’t do!” Nine wiped at his busted lip with the back of one dirty forearm, smearing the blood onto his cheek. “There’s still half a day left yet.”

  Saint Daveuro an opening posture. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Once again, the boy disappeared and the shadow remained.

  Then a sed shadoeared.

  And a third.

  Saint Davehem as they closed in from all sides. win swords, as long and narrow as the boy’s skinny arms, stuck out of the hands of one shadow. A swordstaff crossed the body of the sed. The st showed a heavy curved bde and straight, serrated dagger.

  So Nine had recruited the prind the pirate, had he?

  “That’s a lot of invisibility to keep up,” Saint Daven said. “Lots of blood magic to gh in the midday sun. Must be plicated to keep track of them all, too.”

  “Sure ’nough is,” Nine agreed, amusement in his reedy voice.

  Saint Daven darted ihe range of the shadow-swordstaff before the prince could bring it to bear and before the dual wielders could attack. The staff moved, but Saint Daven hooked an arm around it. As expected, solid wood was trapped beh his arm.

  “’t mirror three shadows at once?” Saint Daven spun, swinging the prio the pirate’s shadow.

  “Nope.” Nine’s shadow raced at him from behind.

  Saint Daven wheeled around, whipping his bdes to meet the boy. Steel ged against steel. Sparks flew from the poiween the visible and the invisible.

  Then suddenly, the boy’s shadow twisted. The pirate and the prioo. The three shades twiogether, wavered, and jumped to different points of the pass.

  “I ’t mirror ’em, me,” Nine said. Steel whistled toward Saint Daven’s ribs. “But I figure this’s close enough.”

  Close enough turned out to be a y-degree divergehe pirate’s shadow came from Saint Daven’s left while the cutss and swordbreaker cut toward his back. The prince’s shadow stabbed from the right while the swordstaff plunged in from his front. Meanwhile, Nine was everywhere, hag, lunging, attag.

  Then the angle ged to forty-five degrees. Then fifteen. Then back to y.

  It was like being pecked apart by an army of sgers. Saint Daven blocked and parried and tered, but the whirl of shadows and o ging. As soon as he resolved the discrepancy between shadow and solid being, Nine ged it.

  A skilled swhter could defeat two oppos if he got lucky. A fully ented Thorn might mahree, provided they weren’t also Thorns aook them out before they started to wear him down.

  But the stant ge of view forced Saint Daven into a drawn-out test, and the strain of blog five ons with two required enormous amounts of stamina. His reserve of blood magic was drained in mihe st time he’d used so much blood magi such a short time…

  Ghosts of the ternds started to scream. Blood poured in rivers across fgstones, soaked carpets, spshed around his boots. The humid stink of sughter filled the tight fines of the antechamber, mingling with sweat and sour breath and pierced bowels. Saint Daven reached for replenishment from the energies of his brother Thorns, the men he was cutting down, but found himself blocked.

  None of the Royal Thorns that he’d killed at House Mattius had been able to create a shield like that.

  The hot, reekirap of an antechamber faded, and the sunlit bailey came bato focus. This wasn’t the ternds. One of the boys he was fighting—fighting on a wager, a frustrated brat’s attempt to get out of training, not fighting to protect a lord dead and gone some four years ago now—one of the boys had formed a wall between him and their energies.

  Saint Daven fought on without blood magic, as he’d learo do in this very bailey. It was a losing battle, of course, but a Thorn fought until he could fight no more. Sweat soaked his clothing and flew like rain with every motion. From every side, the shadows whirled and danced and disoriented.

  The swordstaff hooked the back of his heel. Saint Daven lifted that foot to take away the leverage.

  A small, sweaty body thumped into him from the opposite side. They crashed to the ground in a pile of arms, legs, and bdes.

  Luck was all that kept them from cutting themselves to ribbons on their swords. Saint Daven’s left arm inned between himself and the boy, but he swung the sword in his right.

  Only to have that hand stomped back down by an unseen boot. The pirate’s cutss rested against his throat.

  The partial invisibility and distortion dropped.

  The red face of a sweaty, dirty boy grinned down at Saint Daven.

  “We won, us!” Nine whooped and jumped up. “It was just like the pirate scum said, you couldn’t keep going ’gainst the three of us without no blood magic!”

  The pirate iion was gring down at the ons master with something close to respect.

  “You sted lohan expected,” Twenty-six said. “I thought a blood drinker would fail much sooner cut off from his blood magic.”

  Four huffed a ugh. “He’s always uimating us abominations.”

  Saint Daven stood and dusted himself off. “You came up with the shielding pn,” he said to Twenty-six. Then he the former prince. “And you executed it. And the angle distortion—”

  “That was all mine, you groy ol’ crow! And I was the one what said we three brothers oughta all scrap with you at once, ’cuz you’da never expected it.” The boy stopped dang around and poi the master. “See, I think! Told you my way was better’n perfevisible!”

  “It’s not better. It’s different.”

  “Whupped you, different!”

  “You didn’t beat me,” Saint Daven said. “Your army beat me, and you helped them.”

  “They helped me with my pn. If’n you wanted a one-on-one fight, you shoulda said it had to be so when you wagered.” Nine spun on his heel and headed for the barracks. He waved over his shoulder. “See how you like two weeks not foolin’ with extra lessons, ’cuz I’m fixing to like it just fine.”

  The prince offered Saint Daven a smirking, courtly bow before following his gloating friend. The pirate let a terse nod suffice.

  Teically, as a master, Saint Daven could have the little brat sced for disrespect.

  But it was the first time he’d found anything funny in a long while. And in truth, hiding three attackers at once while dist their shadows was the most impressive blood magic he’d ever seen.

  Saint Daven headed for the Masters’ Tower, trying to hide the smile on his face. The little berserker was right, he was looking forward to having his days back for a while.