With the southern coast’s mild temperature swings, the fires had to be lit in Thornfield’s grates much ter in the year than Izak was used to. The cold never quite reached the severity it did farther north, but wiorms ing in off the o dumped chilly, stinging rain almost nightly.

  Just before the turn of the new year—too te for most of the students’ tastes—training moved ihe first-years quickly realized why the masters had been so loath t them in out of the cold. The only space rge enough for the full school to practice was the dining hall, and even that was hardly suffit. No night went by without someone uionally bloodied by a stray bde.

  The masters maintaihat the cramped quarters and obstacles made by tables and benches were a good lesson in indhting, where most of their future grafting would be spent. At mealtimes, however, even they cursed the lingering smell of too many men and boys sweating in an enclosed area.

  The public house at Sandshells did peak business during the winter. Most of the residents from the little vilge came in daily to stave off the chill with some drink and idle talk. Sometimes Izak had to wait for Casia or Danasi to be free, whifuriated the Teikru-blessed pri was the first time he’d ever had to jostle for a woman’s attention.

  Worse yet were the nights when Nine would get to the pub first, outpag Izak’s smoke step, and cim one of the girls before he could. The runt had finally ceded that water wasirely bad medie, but she wasn’t stupid enough to try her luck at Thornfield’s bathhouse. Instead, she took to bathing with Casia and Danasi. For their part, the girls delighted in knowing Nine’s secret, funting their dalliances with what looked to be just a sy boy in his awkward years, and making up wild tales about o stoke the jealousy of their vilge beaus.

  Both Twenty-six and Izak preferred a roommate to the formerly dirty one, but when Nine’s washing at the pub edged out Izak’s ce to be with either of the publi’s daughters, the prince couldn’t find it in his heart tive the little brat. It py day for Izak when Nine was finally dragged back to the extra lessons.

  ***

  Unlike Four’s wh and Nine’s drinking—which hadn’t slowed down in spite of what she still sidered a brush with death caused by too much wiwenty-six went to the public house in Sandshells for information.

  While Four wasted time and gold in the upper rooms, Twenty-six listeo the local dirters. After getting no response from the O Rover the first few times he appeared in their pub, the regur ers dismissed the fner as not worth the effort a on with their aced town gossip. Igwenty-six could listen to every versation as if he weren’t there.

  On one wirip to the vilge:

  “He took out a whole fleet of ’em singlehahe king did.”

  “Get your story straight, it was him and his lords’ armies that fed the pirates to the sharks. All except their pirate prince—he came lig the king’s boots, begging for quarter.”

  “You’re thinking of the first attack. I’m talking about st month, up toward Cove. Sango said a shipload of dead pirates run aground, bursting with blood pgue. That’s Hazerial’s doings.”

  “Blood pgue’s nasty stuff.”

  “Don’t ever doubt it. The fishermen found ahree ships floating offshore, all still as death.”

  “They climb aboard and see if anybody was still alive?”

  “With the blood pgue raging, you clod? They burned what washed up ahe sgers take the rest.”

  Or when a traveling pot-meopped through:

  “The pirate pgue’s old news, friends. Nowadays, everybody’s talking about the fires.”

  “Fires?”

  “O Big Harbor on the south of Siu al. Two more up the coast, and just before I got here, I heard they just had a big one up Siu Jinial way. There was a high wind, and it burnt up every inch of dock, the shipyard, and half the port buildings besides.”

  “What in the name of Khi?”

  Twenty-six knew before the pot-mender answered.

  “Pirates! They’ve been taking our mert ships aing them on fire, then running them into the harbors. They don’t even give the sves and crew a ce to swim for their lives. When they got the bzer at Big Harbor put out, they found a score of dead sailors and sves below the waterline, half burnt, the other half boiled in bilge water. Not the way I’d want to go, I’ll tell you that.”

  Twenty-six had guessed that as well. A raed ander didn’t take captives; it was inhumane. An enemy who died in battle could retain his honor—if he’d had any honor to begin with.

  The pgue-stri ships had been unusually close to nd. Had they been sailing for a dirter haven to spread the deadly disease, but died before they reached their target? What tribe had the pgue ships beloo? Were they greatships or smallships? What about the ships that had towed the burning dirter vessels into the harbors?

  These dirters wouldn’t know even if he asked. All he could do ecute.

  Could it be the Waeld carrying out the attacks in the Raen’s absehe Third Tribe of the O Rovers crafted superior ons, suppose they had taken to employing them as well? Or could it be the Hael, led by the avenging father who had once killed a leviathan with nothing but a sword?

  Who was carrying out the attacks was of little sequence. What mattered was that the tribes were still alive, still fighting. Even iorm season, they were fighting.

  His people who were no longer his people—who wouldn’t want to be his people if they knew him now. Hearing of their strength was like listening to the poets recite the old legends.

  He wished he could tell them about Mehet, Daughter of the Hael, Wife of the Raen, Terror of the Blood Drinkers, Unstoppable Even ih. She would have been the heroine of every O Rover on the waves.

  Let all memory of her coward husband sink fotten to the depths.

  ***

  On most days, wheures had ended and supper was over and the icy wind howled brutally past the archer loop, Four taught Twenty-six how to defend against his illusory blood magic.

  “But if ya teach the pirate scum how to beat ya, you’ll lose the our,” Nine pointed out. She was supposed to be on her way back to the dining hall for her daily lesson with her nemesis, but as usual, she was dragging around their room, deying.

  “To have more skilled oppos is always beneficial,” Twenty-six said. “Four will be forced to improve his swordstaff skill until he defeat me with a bde alone.”

  Nine scratched her nose. “Nah, Four ’t beat you without cheating.”

  “That’s the true be of this strategy,” Four said. “I’ll be knocked out of the bracket soohen I simply sit on the sidelines and enjoy a holiday without lectures or training.”

  “I’ll beat you, me,” the runt told Twenty-six. “Last time, they ehe tour afore we even got to scrap. You never woulda got to the st match if you’da had to face me.”

  “Go to your lesson,” the pirate said.

  Twenty-six preferred not to practice defending against the mental attacks in front of an audience. Based on Four’s matches during the autumn tour, he khat no one else could see or hear what was being presented, but it made the O Rover supremely unfortable that he had no idea what his outward reas were during the attacks. It was bad enough that his roommate could watch the worst a moments of his life pying out again. What if he shamed himself by showing some untaiion?

  “I think I saw you blink once,” Four joked. “But it seems more likely that I blinked myself and just assumed it was you.”

  Twenty-six rarely found the dirter prince funny.

  He also made very little progress. Day after day, Four uraps stolen from Twenty-six’s most painful and private thoughts and memories. Twenty-six built walls deeper and wider than Thornfield’s, but over and ain he found himself trapped in illusion, uo fight ba reality.

  As if Twenty-six didn’t realize how badly he was run aground, the prihought it would be helpful to emphasize how powerful the king of the blood drinkers was.

  “He’s Eketra-blessed. That means that iving shrew of a strong goddess—praise be tlorious name and so on—favored Hazerial with her skill at causing physical aal anguish. If what I do has the ability to upset you, then my father will destroy you.”

  “That will not matter,” Twenty-six said. In most ways an O Rover could be, he had already beeroyed. “I only have to hold off the illusions long enough to kill him. What happens to me during or after is of no sequence.”

  “Sure, but if you could escape with your life, why wouldn’t you?” Four kicked his swordstaff up and tossed it idly from hand to hand. “Perhaps you could find another sun-kissed beauty to make a shipful of pirate offspring with?”

  Twenty-six’s gre warned Four to steer clear of those reefs.

  “Don’t you want to survive?” the prince demanded.

  oint would there be to tinued existence the blood debt was repaid? He was cursed, a coward who deserved no future. Death would be a relief, even if he could never join his family and his tribe in paradise.

  “I do not fear death.”

  “But to go chasing after it seems foolhardy.” Four shrugged. “Well, one way or another, if you want to defend against this attack, then yoing to have to let go of the dead woman.”

  No matter how often Four repeated that advice, Twenty-six couldn’t do it. Mehet meant more to him than he could expin. She was the spirit of his people, a gleaming gem of memory, proof that there had once been something more to him than rage ainess and self-loathing. He khe world used to taiy, but she was the only bit of it he could remember.

  He would just have to find another way to get around Four’s illusions.

  ***

  The usual illnesses brought on by bad weather and rge groups crammed into small spaces went around Thornfield. Most were merely annoying, hardly worth the hoarse cursing expended by those who caught them. But in amongst the harmless siesses, things like pneumonia and the ade the rounds, ying out evero residents.

  The healer’s shed filled up with students and staff alike, while the healers worked from dusk ’til dusk again, tending to the sid trying to jam in more beds. The kit was the first to lose a member, the older cook from whom Nine had learned about Grandmaster’s “vestment.” The number of masters ued by illness dwindled until the a Master of Archives was teag every lecture himself, grouping all levels together in one room. Those who could learn would learn what they could.

  A sed-year student came down with an ague and was dead within a week. Then Master Risk caught the same ague, aures were suspended until he or another knowledgeable master could take over once more. Pneumonia carried off a handful of students, and a wave of fever followed, taking to the grave more who had been weakened by the previous ailment.

  out of extra lessons for two days in a row while Masters Saint Daven and Saint Galen got through the worst of their croup, both on the same days. She was ecstatid demanded she and her roommates go to the vilge to celebrate.

  “That’s how twins is,” she told Four and Twenty-six on their run for Sandshells. She paused to emphasize this bit of wisdom with a long snort and spit. The runt had had a perpetually runny nose since winter began, but nothing worse yet. “They think the same, and they take sick the same.”

  Unfortunately, at least to Nine’s way of thinking, her twin died. bat training, which had been taken over by Grandmaster for those two days, was returo the Saints as soon as they could leave their beds uheir own pain, and the extra sword lessons resumed.

  “So you lived, didja?” tered the day Saint Daveurned.

  “Disappointed?” The master saw Nine apathetically prying at the cracks between the fgstones with owin sword. “What are you sitting around for? You know how these lessons begi up and gh your—” He broke off in a coughing fit. It was a long minute before he could croak out the rest of the h your positions. If you want me dead, you’ll have to kill me yourself. And you won’t do it with that kind of posture. Stand up straight.”

  In all, the staff agreed this was the worst year for ailments that any of them could remember.

  ***

  On the harsh, rainy evening that the first-year css buried Forty-three, the crazy-eyed low street boy Nine cimed to have busted out of the gaol with, Izak finally got to see the legendary mass grave where Thornfield dumped prospective Thorns who didn’t survive to be grafted.

  Located at the farthest end of the spit of sand, the pit sat between Thornfield’s westernmost wall and the o. Izak ted five archer loops between the rubbish pit and their room, which expihe smells that occasionally wafted in. Broken pss, split wineskins, and rotting scraps of food that even the pigs refused to eat. As only two brood sows and a boar had bee for the winter and the rest butchered, there was rather more of the rotting food than in the warmer seasons.

  A flock of gulls fpped away from the pit when they arrived, angrily calling over their shoulders. Their tribution to the refuse stood out in stark white sptters and streaks.

  “It’s just a rubbish pit,” Fifty-one, Bastard of West Crag and still dedicated stater of the obvious said.

  “Speaks to our value, doesn’t it?” Izak muttered darkly. He didn’t see any obvious human remains below. There were some bones, but those looked to e from sheep and fowl. Perhaps that rger rib there had once been a human’s. But it could just as easily have beloo a pig.

  Having been born with the royal blood magic, illness had roubled Izak. He’d been immuo siess his entire life. The grafting, however, was violent enough to kill any man, and then into the rubbish pit with him.

  Funny how oftehought he deserved to be dumped out with the refuse, a he’d never really sidered what it would look like to end up there.

  Nine elbowed him. He smacked her bony arm off.

  “Whehe dead temperer e get ya?”

  “There aren’t aemperers outside Siu al,” Izak told her.

  A gull got tired of waiting for them to leave and dove back down for a slushy bite of bed squash end.

  Nine grunted. “They oughta put this somewheres away from the water. A fell miasma’s gonna collect, then we’re all killt.”

  At the far end of the pit, Master Malid Forty-three’s roommates rolled the dead boy down the slope into the trash. The closest bystanders helped shovel enough dirt and sand down to hide the body from the gulls. One of Forty-three’s roommates wept while he said some words that the wind carried away. Another roommate sobbed from a bination of grief and the croup that had carried Forty-three off, and the third scrubbed at his eyes with a dirty rag.

  What were the odds anybody would be weeping at Izak’s burial?

  What was there to mourn, anyway?

  He turo the pirate. Twenty-six watched them dump sand onto the corpse with a darker than usual scowl.

  “pting the future?” Izak joked.

  “Don’t let them put me in the dirt.” Twenty-six’s gray-green eyes shorangely bright in the evening gloom and light from the ghost city. “If I die here, give me back to the o.”

  Izak tried to ugh, but curtailed it as the dead boy’s grieving roommates passed.

  “You’re not going to die here,” he hissed. “Stop talking nonsense.”

  But was it really nonsense? If they survived until their grafting, they would all die here, every one of them with a thornknife in his heart. Some would e back when their new masters called.

  Most? Izak couldn’t remember ever hearing the odds of survival, but he hoped most came back.

  The rest would tumble down this slope and have sand kicked down after.