The tradition, as it turned out, was for the previous year’s crop of prospective Thorns to spit in, dump on the floor, stomp on, and generally ruin the supper for the new arrivals. In this way, the just-raised second-years could both demonstrate for the new students what to expect from their first season at Thornfield and join the ranks of the hazers who had made their previous year hell.

Looking down at the impressively large gob of mucus in his mutton and the boot-mashed piece of bread, Izak decided he was not that hungry after all. The next meal would be more to his tastes.

“What, are you took sick?” Nine asked, inspecting Izak’s food. To lean over the table, the runt had to climb halfway over it. “’Cuz if you are, hand that here. I won’t let the rats get it, me.”

“Enjoy.” Izak slid the plate across to him. “Have a little trouble getting dressed?”

From where he’d been sitting, naively anticipating his meal, Izak had watched the runt wrestle with the new clothing, batting away Master Malice’s attempts to help, and finally yanking it on over his dirty, dripping rags. Between the master, the rustic, and Nine, they had managed to wrangle the old clothing off from beneath the new—at least some of which had required the assistance of Malice’s sword. The garments Nine wore now were still damp in places.

“Me?” Nine scoffed as he scooped snot off the food and onto the table. “I used to get dressed leventy-five times a day in jewels and gold and salks, but then I figured out that-there’s for fools. You put on clothes once and you can keep ’em on ’til they fall off. Saves you all sortsa grapplin’.”

Izak smirked. “Really? So those rags you had on used to be… salks, did you say?”

“Sure ’nuff, finest you ever seen downriver.” He was already halfway through the second plate. “Salk this and that and th’other. Like to choke me, I had so much.”

“Naturally. Who was your importer? Carovelia and Sons? Opalo Company?”

“Juan.” The contaminated plate was cleared of edibles and a stomach-turning amount of phlegm. Nine’s pointed features searched the hall for other unwanted or unprotected grub.

“Juan?” Izak prompted.

“You sure heard of Juan! Ask around Siu Carinal. The rich uphill folks, they all know Juan.”

Izak chuckled. “Oh, that Juan.”

A shadow stopped behind the boy. The whipmaster was back.

“You’re supposed to be on scullery duty in the kitchens.”

“I never scull on a empty gut, me.”

Master Saint Galen hauled the protesting boy off the bench and toward a door behind the masters’ table. Nine swiped an older student’s half-eaten bread unnoticed as he was dragged past.

“Take all sorts here, don’t they?” Penuel-Denuel said.

“I hadn’t noticed.” Izak usually avoided speaking to the bastard at state functions, not due to his illegitimacy but because the man was a dedicated belaborer of the obvious.

From either side, the wealthier sons who had been keeping their distance from the low street brat slid closer, hoping to join the conversation with the prince. All excluding the foreign murderer, who was ignoring everyone equally.

Izak let the sycophants fawn, making the occasional sarcastic remark, but he was only half listening. By his guess, the little liar Nine was the youngest of the new arrivals. About Kelena’s age, if not younger, still waiting for puberty to strike. A heavyset vintner’s son several seats to Izak’s right had to be the eldest, approaching a score of years. The majority fell closer to Etian’s age, around sixteen.

Izak felt conspicuously old.

Up at the head table, Vorino and the gold-eyed whipmaster burst out in laughter. Twice in one day! One might think guarding the royal family wasn’t all the merry entertainment it was purported to be.

Other instructors who had finished their meals pulled their chairs closer to the visiting Thorn. It wouldn’t be every day a rider came all the way out to this night-forsaken end of the world. This might be their only chance to catch up on news and gossip for the year.

The upperclassmen began leaving the hall, but the new arrivals remained. Some—like Nine, who had snuck back out of the kitchens to inhale the left-behind scraps—were still eating. Others were looking around for direction.

Izak didn’t bother. He was used to retainers directing him from engagement to engagement. The body-shufflers at Thornfield might be called by a different name, but they would be on their way.

***

“They’re staring,” Vorino said, slicing into his mutton.

As a visiting Thorn, he had been given the seat of honor at Grandmaster Heartless’s right, on display for the sea of faces below. A good number were looking up at him with open worship. He couldn’t believe there were creatures so young and naive in all existence. Or that he’d ever been one of them.

“I’m sure you did the same in your time here,” Heartless said. “I know I did.”

Vorino grunted in slightly embarrassed agreement. In fact, Heartless had been the visitor he’d gawked at. Every boy in his year had. The Great Defier, conqueror of the Coffee Islands, many-times savior of Ikario IX. Equal parts hero and legend, Heartless was the Thorn they all aspired to be.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

To either side of Vorino, the masters’ table was peopled by former Thorns whose exploits still made the rounds among the guard. Fright, who had single-handedly saved his lord’s entourage from Helat ambush in the north. Grizzled Joashin, who at his lord’s order had fought a thousand battles as a mercenary and come out the victor in every one. Malice, who had taken his lord’s place in an impossible duel and saved the man’s life and dignity.

Those were the men who deserved the awe of the students, the men whose valiant examples of service they should aspire to follow. Vorino was barely more than a royal babysitter.

But proximity and age had taken the shine from the legends. The students saw thinning hair, sagging muscle, and growing paunches and couldn’t imagine the speed, power, and bravery of the Thorns their instructors had once been. Even Heartless failed to hold their attention. These boys had never known a Thornfield without the Great Defier.

Vorino was a new face, in his prime, and liveried in the king’s colors. He was what the boys imagined when they heard the words Royal Thorn, and so he received their unmerited admiration.

“Small crop this year,” he said in attempt to change the subject.

“Young men who can use the blood magic are getting harder to come by these days,” the grandmaster admitted. “Those who have it are either born noble and exempt from service or have already been drafted into a lord’s standing army and killed on the northern front.”

“And now we’re at war with the pirates. That ought to take out what’s left.” A hand slapped Vorino’s back. “Welcome home, you ugly mutt.”

“Six!” Vorino dropped his knife and slung an arm around his young friend.

Hard to believe this was the same gawky little lunatic Vorino had tried to get kicked out of his room. Looked as if Six had finally grown into those gangly arms and legs, and there was even a hint of stubble on his jaw. Same eerie gold eyes, though.

Vorino and Six had started at Thornfield a couple years apart, but when two of Vorino’s bunkmates had died of a particularly virulent ague, Six and another first-year had been assigned to fill the empty beds.

“Saint Daven now,” the gold-eyed man said, taking the seat next to him. “Though I did consider going back to Six after… after.”

Awkwardly, Vorino nodded. It didn’t need to be said what “after” his friend was referring to. The Cinterlands Rebellion was four years in the past, but the night still stood fresh and bloody in the minds of every Royal Thorn.

“Thorns don’t have the luxury of retreating, Master Saint Daven,” Grandmaster Heartless reproved him. “We push forward, always.”

“Of course, Grandmaster.”

Under the guise of taking a drink, Vorino studied his young friend more closely. Dark circles lay under his eyes, and shadows haunted the hollows of his angular face. No Thorn slept well—the grafting didn’t allow it—but these days Saint Daven must have more reason than most for day terrors.

Four years before, the rebel Lord of the Cinterlands had grafted three men without the king’s sanction, intending to use them to dethrone Hazerial. Of the stolen Thorns, Saint Daven was the only survivor.

More than thirty of the Royal Thorns sent to arrest the traitorous lord hadn’t been so lucky.

Khalit-alash—the Old Khinesian legal term for “brother-killer”—was how the Thornfield Archives recorded the death of a Thorn at the hands of another Thorn. In one bloody battle, Saint Daven had slain more brothers than most Thorns were called upon to face in a lifetime, outpacing all but Master Risk, Ikario’s infamous executioner.

What the previous grandmaster, the ancient Poqin, had been thinking when he allowed the unauthorized grafting was impossible to say. Perhaps his sight had already been too weak to recognize a falsified writ when he held one. All that could be said for sure was that Poquin’s death in his sleep had come just in time to save him from a very messy alternative at King Hazerial’s hand.

Not soon enough to save Wraith, Cutter, or the thirty-odd Royal Thorns Saint Daven had killed defending his lord, however. Nor soon enough to keep Saint Daven’s grafted soul from shattering when his lord fell.

But that was the life of a Thorn. Brief, brutal, and ultimately, disposable.

Vorino racked his brain for some neutral ground, something they could talk about that skirted around their lost brothers.

“I suppose you’re weapons master now?” he asked. As a boy, Six had always been supernaturally good with any weapon he picked up—better than any sane man could hope to be.

“More like Master of Charity.” Saint Daven scowled down at his cup. “Grandmaster finds things for me to do so it looks like I’m not just living off the king’s generosity.”

Heartless scoffed. “That’s nonsense. These nights, staff are as short in supply as new students. In active war, no one retires their Thorns. I work Saint Daven half to death just to keep Thornfield from being washed out with the tide. There is no charity or kindness in it. Only cold, simple necessity.”

“Heartless necessity?” Vorino ventured.

Saint Daven let out a sharp bark of laughter that looked as if it surprised him. Pleased with himself for lightening his friend’s dark mood, Vorino laughed, too.

“I swear you young fools get more tiresome every year,” Heartless said, shaking his head. But behind his cup, he smiled as well.

***

“What do you know about the war at sea?” was Grandmaster Heartless’s next line of inquiry. Several other masters had crowded around to listen.

“Very little.” Vorino hadn’t been privy to the king’s war council, being instead tasked with the domestic job of delivering the former crown prince to Thornfield. But he had picked up bits and pieces before he left. “The strong gods declared it as the path to victory over the Helat. Ruis says the king believes that attacking the Kingdom of Day by sea will give us the upper hand.”

“How so, when we barely know anything of the continent’s northern coastline?” asked Master Fright. Fright was in his middle years, and his foppish taste in all the modern fashions made him something of a joke—at least until he had steel in hand. Then it became clear that he was well named.

“They won’t expect it, for one,” Vorino said. “If you look at the goods Lord Narinde’s seagoers have seized from the pirates in the past, it’s obvious the Helat have merchant fleets just like ours that get similarly raided by the savages. His Highness Crown Prince Etianiel believes that, with the ocean at our disposal, we could seize a handful of Helat trading vessels and make a massacre of their coastal cities before they know what hit them.”

“Take a look down there.” Heartless indicated the new arrivals with a subtle jerk of his chin. “See the lad with the blond hair? A pirate from the first raid.”

Vorino frowned. “I was under the impression that there would be no survivors.”

Master Malice clicked his tongue at Vorino’s naivety. “Hostages win and lose wars. A wise king will always hold at least one until he is assured of victory.”

Malice would know. He’d been nabbed from the Coffee Islands as a boy along with a slew of native children. Now his people served the Kingdom of Night in their own coffee forests and cane fields.

“According to the orders I received, His Majesty intends to graft the pirate when he’s finished his training,” Heartless said. “I assumed he would be used as a ransom. Waging war requires a near constant supply of gold, after all, and even back in my day keeping the war coffers full was an endless struggle. If your source is correct about a sea attack on the Helat coastline, however, the boy’s knowledge of the waters could prove pivotal.”

“What’s supposed to stop him from swimming away before then?” Saint Daven asked, speaking up for the first time in several long minutes. Vorino was glad to hear it; he’d begun to think that his friend’s glassy, distant stare meant Six had left them behind to relive bloodier memories.

Heartless looked to their Coffee Island brother. “I believe Master Malice is the best one to answer that question.”

“I can tell you in one word why he will stay.” Malice grinned, showing wolfish teeth. “Revenge.”