By the time the first-year spring bracket had started, it was all over Thorhat the king would arrive unapahis year. There was a strange sense of mingled disappoi and relief that the queen wouldn’t be joining him. Most of the uppercssmen were still talking about seeihe year before. A, sihen, she had mao kill both Striker and Twelve—their thornknives had been pnted in the graveyard out past the walls and the annous made in the dining hall during supper.

  The sed-year bracket progressed as expected. Twenty-six, Izak, and Lathe tore through the rounds despite the increased skill of their oppos.

  Uours before, Izak had bee skilled enough with the swordstaff that he barely o use the royal blood magitil his match with the pirate. Just as the runt had said so long ago, there was no way Izak could beat Twenty-six fair and square. The pirate fought through a wall of fire and threw off the puppet-string urge to fy himself with his own bdes. He even mao heat Izak’s internal ans to a novice level before Izak cut off Twenty-six’s blood magid hit upon the winning teique: filling his nose, mouth, throat, and lungs with clotted blood.

  It looked as if Lathe would face Izak for the championship, until Eighty-Eight beat the runt in the shocker of the penultimate round.

  The dual-bde wielding berserker had the match firmly in hand. She backed the huge rustic across the bailey, f the spectators to hurry out of the way. Eighty-eight stumbled in the roots of the thorn tree and thumped backward against the trunk, desperately filing his longsword in an effort to dey the iable.

  Then, out of nowhere, Lathe’s right leg buckled.

  Eighty-eight’s awkward swing scraped down her bde and dug into her shoulder. She tried to bind the bde by ing her arm around it and raise her opposite sword to his throat, but a strange deadening wave washed through her muscles.

  With a final heave, the rustic’s sword came to rest along the inside of Lathe’s neck.

  “Winner: Eighty-eight—”

  Lathe screamed and tore into the crowd. Her target was the mert’s son, Thirty.

  Luckily for Thirty, Master Fright had seen Lathe lose a sure win the year before and was ready for her outburst.

  As the master dragged her off Thirty, Lathe shrieked, “He cheated, him! He shot me with this here traption all slicked up with bad medie!”

  She threw down a crossbow small enough to fit in the palm of Thirty’s pudgy hand.

  “I’ve never seen that toy before in my life,” he said.

  “Liar!” Lathe tried to cw her way ba but colpsed in the dirt, legs refusing to cooperate. “I swiped it outta his trousers, me!”

  Grandmaster Heartless stepped in before the inter-year flict could escate any further.

  “Four, drag Lathe over to Healer Prime to deal with that nerve-deadening agent. One assumes it is quite hard to teract, and even harder to acquire for anyone whose father does not frequently ship less-than-docile bloodsves to sacramentals.”

  Thirty and Lathe both started shouting arguments again; Lathe’s words were growing notably slurred.

  “Master Fright’s ruling och stands.” Grandmaster’s voice cracked across the bailey like a sp. “Lathe, you lost! Clear the ring!”

  Heartless raised a hand before she could protest, though by then the poison had incapacitated her pletely. “In a real skirmish, there will always be unforeseen circumstances. If a Thorn ot defeat his oppo in spite of interference, in spite of the worst odds and the greatest obstacles, then he is a dead man and his master with him.”

  ***

  As Four and Twenty-six carried their drugged roommate to the healer, Grandmaster Heartless raked his eyes across the crowd of students. Some gaped in e, others looked smug, the mert’s son included.

  That was the danger of petition. Youoo easily fot that what was truly on the line was aual fight for their masters’ lives.

  “Remember this,” Grandmaster told them. “This tour does to see who win in a fair fight. You are not at Thoro learn courtly dueling rules with de and first bloods and ‘have mercies’. You are here to win. End of discussion.”

  ***

  Due t flooding, the roads between Siu al and Thornfield had turo s. The king and his ente arrived a week ter than expected, and not in the royal carriage, but on horseback, surrounded by likewise mounted Royal Thorns. The carriage remained where it had gotten stuck, with its footmen, a local stable owner, his sons, and a team of workhorses trying to dig and drag the vehicle out before the marshy ground swallowed it whole.

  Despite the ck of a beautiful queen apanying him, the king’s arrival was still awe-inspiring for most of the popution of Thornfield. Young men and boys cheered and jostled with each other for a better view of the Chosen of the Strong Gods, whom, one day, they might serve.

  The arrival had e in the midst of supper, but not a soul among them was disappoi what they had left their meals to see. Even through the mud, Hazerial’s clothing was regal, dark purples and blues and golds. The distinctive House Khi features that made his son so admired by the fairer sex made the king impossible to ignore. He radiated such power and authority that even the hired post nag he rode looked like a beast bred for the royal stables. One could easily believe the stories of the king felling aire pirate tribe singlehanded.

  o that, Grandmaster Heartless, the legend of their brotherhood and ruler of their tiny spit of sand, seemed faded and small, and that in itself was a shock of perspective to most of the students.

  To Izak, the trast was an indication that the man who deserved respect was not always the man who looked as if he should and respect.

  Luck—whether good or bad remaio be seen—had pced him and Twenty-six much closer to the sn this year than they had been the year previous. The pirate watched the king pass by, a mere arm’s length away, with the same chilling gre the prince had seeanding opposite the point of his cutss.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Izak said under his breath.

  “A shark attacks when it is hungry,” Twenty-six replied, watg the king follow Grandmaster inside. “A leviathan attacks when it is ready.”

  ***

  Because of the te hour of his arrival, the king did not send frandmaster Heartless until the following sundowless gave the king the list and the apanyi on the fourth-years ready frafting, this time with three names from among the third-years to fill the required gaps in the ranks. It was less than he had stolen from the previous third-year css, but not by much.

  “A bare score and ten,” Hazerial mused. He raised his dark eyes from the part. “You have no others you would sider didates frafting this year?”

  “These thirty are the best from among the senior csses and the most prepared for service tonight. Your Majesty, may I speak freely?”

  “You have our permission. Speak your mind.”

  Heartless had no iion of doing that. The younger geion of Thorns might think him fearless, and his old friends certainly believed he was brutally hoo a fault, but Heartless was no fool. He would attempt to get his point across in the closest approximation that the required reverence for a sn allowed.

  “As Your Majesty has no doubt already noticed, the number of Thorns produced by Thornfield has been on the dee. Our recruiters search diligently throughout the holdings, sc for a drop of blood magic. I admit boys noould have been turned away when I was ing up through the ranks, and it is because h stronger blood be found. Our test arriving crop had two shy of the number you hold in your hand. A mere twe students.”

  Hazerial fixed him with a stern expression. “Your emphasis is uood, Grandmaster. Stop beb the details ao the point.”

  “The blood magic is dying out. The men who have it are not passing it on to the geion, because most do not live long enough to sire children. We pluck the few boys that are born with it out of the gutters, put a sword in their hands, and they’re killed before they reproduce. There will e a night when no user of blood magi be found at all.”

  “You speak as if the blood magic is a matter of pareher than the blessing of the strong gods,” Hazerial said.

  “I don’t seek to undermiheir supremacy, Your Majesty. But could it be that the strong gods have chosen to retake their blessing from us?”

  “Tell us about the pirate,” Hazerial said.

  Grandmaster blihat was not the response he had been expeg, but a sudden pivot was not unusual with the king. Heartless flowed with the ge of subject.

  “Twenty-six is the best swordsman in his year, Your Majesty, though he ranks sed overall to Prince Izak. He ot overe the prince’s blood magic.”

  Hazerial received the mention of his son’s superiority with an indifferent grunt. “In our st ference, you said that the pirate could see as well as the average Child of Night in the dark, though he retained his day vision.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “How does he heal?”

  “Exceptionally. He has been sced, and he’s e off worse for the wear in bouts that would have killed weaker me he has never approached Healer Prime of his own accord for anything but wound salve.”

  “And how is he doing it, Grandmaster?”

  Heartless frowned. “Either by the blood magic or by some magic the pirates have that we don’t yet know of.”

  King Hazerial sat ba his chair and looked down his the grandmaster. “I will tell you something I have not told another soul, Heartless.”

  Though the royal we had disappeared, Grandmaster felt more certain thahat he stood in the presence of a divinely appointed king. How the legends of Heartless the Great Defier would ge if only the tellers khat, in the face of such power, Heartless felt like an ant in the shadow of the royal boot.

  “That pirate was gifted to me by the strong gods,” the king said. “Through this gift, I will destroy our a enemy ond for all.”

  ***

  The fourth-year bracket, which had been postponed for His Majesty’s arrival, took pce over the following two nights, and the grafting the night after. No one died during the ritual that year. The king’s hand was too practiced to botch the thornknife ceremony, and Grandmaster had warned each of the chosen third-years not to choose a name if they weren’t certain of it. The ck of dead made the celebratory feast even more festive.

  Izak left early, and it took very little ving to get Twenty-six to do the same. All the prince had to do was ask the pirate if he would rather practice than sit there ing his food and staring at the king.

  “I was not staring at him. I was assessing his guard.”

  “Well, if you noticed anything iing, don’t tell me. He might ask about it when he sends for me.”

  But no summons came. The king and his new crop of Royal Thorns rode out without a g the former prince.

  “I ’t decide whether that’s a good sign or a bad one,” Izak told Twenty-six while they practiced the day.

  “Interpreting signs is the work of a wife.” Twenty-six shifted his feet, prepared to begin their blood magic duel. “A man puts his muscle into the fight and leaves the rest to the God of the Waves.” He gestured with his swordbreaker for Izak to reset his own stance. “Let us begin again.”

  Izak grimaced. “If you want to keep going, let me heal your broken shoulder. It’s making me sick hanging like that.”

  If the king had asked about Twenty-six’s use of blood magic that year, one of the first things Izak had been prepared to tell him was that the pirate was hopeless at the most basic of spells—healing himself. That wasn’t necessarily a lie. While Twenty-six’s body healed quickly, his scious efforts to speed healing were negligible pared to allowing the blood magic to take its course naturally.

  For the sake of time, Twenty-six agreed.

  Izak id his hands on the break, catg hold of the hot blood pooling in the muscle around the injury. trating, he poured energy into speeding the repair, drawing the pieces back together, aligning the break, knitting the bone, and strengthening the fissure so it wouldn’t immediately break again.

  Where Twenty-six was making little progress at healing—due to ck of i, Izak suspected, sidering that in a few short months the pirate had leartacks most nobles couldn’t even pull off—Izak himself was being quite the skilled healer. He no longer he other person to drink the same blood as he had to mend the damage, and he could speed the repair of all but catastrophic wounds.

  Funny. He’d spent a childhood learning to torture aroy, but all it had taken to acquire the knack for restoration was a friend with a death wish.

  If his future as captain of Etian’s Royal Thorns weren’t set in stone, Izak would have sidered asking for a position at Thornfield under Healer Prime. The man was often overheard menting the fact that so few men with blood magic were ied i of healing.

  Izak could see why Prime so ehe task. To take an injured person aurn him to health called to something deep within Izak. Every successful repair, even minor ones, felt as if they threw a shovelful of purpose into the ragged hole in his soul.

  He could almost imagine his Uncle Ahixandro approving of such a pursuit. A lifetime of repairing rather tharoying. Building up rather than breaking down.

  But imagining a lifetime as a healer was as much a waste of time as calling upon the Bsphemous One. Just as Izak’s name would never ge, his future wouldher. He would grow old proteg his brother from malicious and violehs by inflig violent and malicious deaths oackers and making sure that those deaths were horrifiough thten away anyone else sidering the same. His rewards would be watg over his eventual nephews and nieces until they grew up to repce him aian, and fiery dalliances with the most beautiful ahusiastic whores a Royal Thorn’s sary could buy.

  At least he would get to use his healing skills on occasion. Probably not for Etian. If his brother needed healing, it would be because Izak had badly failed at his job. But certainly to heal the feng partners who didn’t realize how dangerous it was to spar with the sed ing of Josean after he’d received the Blood of the Strong Gods.