In the end, they were luine was drunk.

  She tried t the pirate’s cutss and swordbreaker into the fight, but Twenty-six kicked the cutss out of her read Izak pried the swordbreaker out of her hand. When she went after the pirate with fists instead, Twenty-six caught hold of her hair and held her at arm’s length, as he had on the occasions when Nine had tried to scrap with him as a boy. As usual, that pletely nullified her blows, which made Nine berserk. Twenty-six refused to do more than defend himself now that Nine was a girl, so they were all bruised and bleeding by the time Izak finally wrestled her away and got her to calm down.

  “She ain’t killt, Pretty!” Nine slurred as tears dripped off her . “If’n you’re two really my brothers and not straight betrayers, then that means she’s your sister, too, and you gotta help me protect her. You gotta help me stay a boy, so’s I be a Thorn. It’s loyalty, is what it is.”

  Izak licked at his split lip. She didn’t know the size of what she was asking. Light, he could barely guess at it. There were more than three years left before they were grafted. Someone was bound to find out.

  “How do you expect us to keep something like this quiet?” he asked. “Uwenty-six knows some way to hide your bleeding all over the pce, because I sure as night don’t.”

  The runt looked to Twenty-six as if she actually expected him to have an answer.

  He stopped poking at the rising bruise on his cheekbone. “Why would I know?”

  “Well, you knowed a bunch a’ other stuff,” Nine snapped. She scratched the back of her head, then fixed Izak in her left-eyed stare. Strange how she could have all the same mannerisms a look so different now that Izak knew what she was. “Them whores at the pub must know what to do about it. I’ll ask ’em.”

  Twenty-six looked at the sheets of rain falling beyond the archer loop. “It’s almost evening. The hall will be filling with breakfasters ihan an hour. Three missing faces will draw attention, especially if they all share the same room.”

  “I make it by myself, easy,” Nine said. “Anyhow, I’m faster’n a stray y own. I’ll get there and back afore training.”

  “There’s still some faint daylight,” Izak argued. “The patrols might see your shadow from the wall and raise the arm.”

  Nine scowled. “No, it won’t be like that grumped Master Saint Daven said. They won’t raise no arm, ’cuz I’ll mirror my shadow all the way uhe battlements in with the other shadows. Who’s gonna tell one shadow from the rest of the dark?”

  Izak opened his mouth tue more, then stopped.

  “That’s… actually not a bad idea. Maybe you are smarter as a girl.”

  Nine spat on him.

  ***

  Squeezing through the grating wasn’t possible any longer, because of the invely growing chest and hips Four had mentioned. With a curse, Nine covered her nose and mouth like she’d seen Four do and plunged uhe draier. For a panicky moment, her pants caught ooothlike iron bars at the bottom of the grate, and hought she was going to drown. But then the cloth tore free, and she shot out the other side.

  She came up coughing and gasping. Taking a quick peak at the battlements above, she disappeared and took off for the thornknife graveyard. As she ran, she made sure to throw her shadow into the st of the shade cast by the gray, stormy su.

  Footprints raced across the wet sand at the edge of the waters, then disappeared, dragged away by the tide. Nine had ored extra clothing in the shrih Twenty-six’s and Four’s, so she sprihrough the graveyard without stopping. She would grab a blood-free pair of her brothers’ clothes on the way back.

  It was fun running invisible, even with the rain. After so long training every day, Nine had built up enough stamina that she didn’t have to drink off any birds or rats along the way. She was a little out of breath when she made it to the pub, but there lenty of medie to steal from the people and livestock sleeping in Sandshell’s little cluster of houses.

  The public house girls were ting their take for the day in the on room when Nine burst in.

  “Strong gods!” Casia clutched her chest. “You’ll kill a person frht crashing in like that!”

  Danasi was the first to see the blood. She jumped up, knog over her chair. “Nine, what’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m a girl, me, but I didn’t know I was gonna bleed so, and now I gotta be a boy again before breakfast’s doh, but I ’t stop this bleeding, not even with all the medie I got, so what do you do about this, both of you, and hurry up!”

  It took another rendition, slowing Nine’s retelling down, and asking for lots of crification, before the women got the full story.

  Casia took Nine upstairs to the bath she’d been preparing for herself while Danasi found the necessaries and brought them in. Together, they answered questions and expined what they could. There was some specutioween them whether Nine had blundered into Thornfield on the cusp of womanhood, or if she was overdue and, like they’d heard from their great aunt who had lived through the Plight, her womanly troubles had held off until she’d had enough nourishment to start growing again.

  “What was this about a bird telling you to bee a boy?” Danasi wao know while she scrubbed the girl’s face.

  “What bird?” Nine spat out soapy water. “I figured on bein’ a boy, me. The orant saved me and Pretty from some bad folk, whupped every one of fifty of ’em all the way back to their fancy fine carriage. I done in half a dozen of ’em, too. Beat one a’ their bodyguards’ head in so bad his insides were leaking out his skull all over my rock.”

  Casia wrinkled her nose. “We don’t need all the bloody details. A orant is a bird, isn’t it? A river bird?”

  “The orant’s god of the streets in Siu al. He watches after us close-rats whenever he . Sends us good medie and that-all. He useta be a close-rat, just like me and Pretty, so he knows there ain’t n god ’ about us. They’re too big, them strong gods, but he’s just right.” Nine smacked a palm down on a curling wake of soap that caught her eye.

  “I told you to stop that!” Danasi snatched a linen and wiped water from her fad bodice. She sighed. “You ought to just e live with us. Dad’s got another room, and you make a fair bit when you’re old enough.”

  Nine shook her head. “Ain’t her of you knows how to cut somebody’s guts out and string him up with ’em. I gotta get dangerous so’s I protect Pretty.” She snorted. “Ain’t her one of you even knows how to use medie!”

  “Stand up.” Casia dumped the bucket of rier over Nine’s head, making the girl shriek and splutter. “That’s for thinking we’re weak and stupid. Now get out here and dry off.”

  ***

  The rain had died down by the time early evening training began. Izak and Twenty-six were sparring with two fourth-years going by the names Manly and Striker, when a stratle imp threaded toward them through the fighters in the bailey. Whoever the boy was, his skin was scrubbed raw. His clothes were the familiar Thornfield issued set, rolled up at the sleeves and ao aodate a too-short body, but Izak swore he’d never seen the boy before.

  Until the boy turned his head just slightly right to look Izak in the eye and grinned.

  “Strong gods save us! You bathed?” Izak got the pirate’s attention. “hed!”

  “That must be why you’re te,” Twenty-six said.

  “e on, pirate,” sriker, the fourth-year he arring with. “Get your head ba the fight and make this worth my while.”

  Without warning, Twenty-six spun bad kicked the older student’s foot out from beh him, thumping Striker in the side of the neck with a half-power blow from his cutss pommel.

  Striker hit the dirt, stiff as a pnk, then started up, blinking the daze from his eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “You got what you asked for, numbskull,” his fellow fourth-year, Manly, told him.

  At Izak’s appreciative snicker, Manly smirked. Even the older students wanted a prio ugh at their jokes.

  “That’s a good trick!” Nine raised her twin swords. “Show me how to do that, ya pirate scum.”

  “Aime,” Twenty-six said.

  “How e not now?”

  “Because,” Master Saint Galen said, grabbing Nine’s shoulder and hauling her around to face his angry gold gre, “students who e te to my training have to spar with me the rest of the evening.”

  Nine’s stint was a short one. By midnight, she was covered in a yer of mud, wet sand, sweat, and the stray sh mark. While the older students were dismissed to lunch, the first-years stayed to work through the extra drills ardiness had earhem, adding an invisible yer of resentful gres to the filth.

  But she hadn’t been caught.

  “See how easy it is bein’ a brother?” Nine whispered cheerfully to her roommates several hours ter, when they were finally allowed t themselves to supper. “Told you wasn’t nobody gonna find out.”