The sun was nearing its apex as the newest crop of prospective Thorns was assigned to board in the westernmost wall of Thornfield’s battlements because it had the highest abundance of empty bedchambers. The years were not always so clearly segregated, however. Deaths, fires, and the constant construction required for the upkeep of such an old structure frequently saw new arrivals boarding with senior students, or seniors shifted to junior’s rooms when repairs were required.

Once assigned, Izak and his bunkmate were left to acquaint themselves with their room. Not a lot of work, that. A door, an archer loop, four shelf beds anchored to the stone walls, two at knee-height, two more nearer the low ceiling. One might call it a cell without being corrected.

Two seemed a small population for a room with four bunks, but perhaps this was another nod to royalty. Thornfield had no luxury to give, so let the former crown prince have extra space.

The foreign probable murderer went to the archer loop and looked out at the sea. Sometime during the late meal, the rain had stopped, leaving behind a churned-surf smell and the harsh glare of sunlight.

“Noisome, isn’t it?” Izak tossed the roll of blankets he’d been issued onto the ugly straw tick on the closest lower bunk. “You don’t happen to know how to arrange these so they look usable for sleeping?”

Instead of answering, the foreigner craned his neck to see out the top of the archer loop, as if he expected Thornfield’s meager ghost city to be hanging over their heads in broad daylight.

“Me either.” Izak unrolled his bundle. That was starting to look right. It almost reached from the head of the bed to the foot, anyway. “I walked in on a chambermaid doing my bedding once, but we never got around to seeing how that ended.”

No response.

Izak crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the top bunk. “Look, if we’re stuck in here together, we might as well get to know each other. I’m Izakie—uh—Izak, rather. Four, if you like.”

Silence.

“Do you even speak this language?” Izak asked. “I know a few others. Coffee-anee? Pilekiene lak vek?”

The foreigner went to the opposite lower bunk and dumped out his bedroll. In a few efficient motions, the straw tick was wrapped in cloth and cover.

Izak blinked. “Run that by me again.”

Without a word, the foreigner climbed into his bed and turned his face to the wall.

***

Well after midday, the door to their room scraped open. Both Izak and the foreigner turned over.

It was the little liar Nine. The boy squinted back and forth between the young men.

“Which a’ you am I supposed to get in with?”

“You’re not.” Izak pointed to the bunks closest to the ceiling. “But take your pick of those.”

“Who’s sleeping in ’em?”

“You.”

“And who else?”

“Just you.”

Nine goggled. “Ain’t nobody gonna get up there with me?”

“It’s all yours. Along with your very own salks and boots.”

But Izak had misread him. The boy wasn’t impressed, he was dismayed.

“All out in the open by myself?” He shook his bald-patched head. “Nah, that’s bad medicine, sleeping alone. Get on over, let me in.”

“No.” The foreigner shoved Nine off his bed.

“I knew you could understand me!” Izak said.

The foreigner scowled. “I do not speak to blood drinkers.”

“You’re speaking to me now.”

Nine turned to Izak. “Let me in with you.”

“Absolutely not.” The kid looked just as dirty as he had before the bath, and now he was giving off a powerful smell of onions from the kitchens. “I doubt that dip earlier was enough to kill your lice.”

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“I ain’t got lice, me!”

“You’re not sleeping down here. You’re the smallest, that bed’s the smallest. Therefore, you sleep up there.”

Nine tried to dodge around, as if Izak would change his mind if he just made it into the bed, but the prince was faster and had longer arms.

Finally convinced Izak wasn’t going to let him in, Nine clambered onto the top bunk and flopped down harder than necessary. The bed creaked under his bird bones.

Izak settled back onto his straw tick, content that he’d won and glad he hadn’t trusted his weight to that rickety piece of driftwood.

“Anyhow, I piss the bed every day,” the little runt growled, “me and my lice.”

It was hard to sleep the sleep of the victorious after that. Izak kept waking up certain he heard dripping.

***

The new recruits’ first few days at Thornfield went to evaluation.

Assessment did not begin with weapon work, but with quizzing in history, letters, arithmetic, politics, and courtly protocol. Nine wasn’t the only boy among the new crop who couldn’t read, write, or count. Most of the low street rabble were entirely illiterate. Several of the rustics had a basic grasp of mathematics—two winter ricks of hay per ram and three per nursing ewe sheep would keep the flock alive until spring grazing came around again—but they had no concept of things such as debt, interest, or accrual.

“I understand why you require lessons on courtly etiquette, and I admit rudimentary numbers will come in handy, especially if all Thorns gamble as recklessly as the King’s Guard,” Izak said after he’d been deemed Excellent in every field of study, “but why bother teaching the rest of it? What Thorn needs to know the subtleties of semantics in the legal sciences or the angle of decay on an arrow? Tell them to step out of the way of the pointy bit, and that’s the gist, isn’t it?”

“Many lords eventually come to rely on their Thorns in more than matters of security.” The Master of Archives, who led the academic assessment, was a bespectacled, bookish-looking old man whose name—Risk—Izak would have taken as a joke if he could find any evidence that the man had a sense of humor. “Who can a lord trust with his businesses, personal dispatches, collections, and lands more than a man grafted into loyalty? In many cases, quick-witted Thorns have risen to take over the night-to-night running of their masters’ estates and affairs of trade or industry.”

Perhaps that was true in the private sector, but Izak had never seen King Hazerial confer with a Thorn on anything but war or defense.

Twenty-six had a different objection for the Master of Archives. “What you are saying is not history, it is lies. The first Dirter War began because a filthy, blood-drinking tyrant thought he could take Ocean Rover children for bloodslaves without reprisal, not because Ocean Rovers sacked coastal villages unprovoked. Ocean Rovers do not set foot on this filth your people wallow in. All attacks were carried out on slavers your dirter king sent into Raen waters.”

Master Risk looked down his hooked nose at Twenty-six. “I stood in the ashes of a village destroyed by your people. When they had raped and plundered as much as they wanted, they locked the women and children into a barn and set it on fire. When women shoved their babies out the windows to save them, the pirate savages crushed the infants with burning clubs.”

“Lies!”

Twenty-six became the first of the new crop to be scourged in front of the entire year for disrespecting a master.

“An hour earlier, and he’d have broken your record,” Risk told Grandmaster Heartless later.

Heartless chuckled. “I suspect he’s a bigger threat to your Most Fights in the First Year.”

“That still stands? Whatever happened to the ferocity of youth?”

***

Martial assessment took the twin weapons masters most of two days.

Where the prince, Four, had breezed through the mental exercises and academic questions, his bladework was average at best. His life of luxury at court had left him slow, soft, and without stamina unless he used blood magic. He handled longsword, falchion, and rapier with familiarity, but no outstanding skill. Worst, his fighting lacked any semblance of aggression.

Master Saint Galen finally goaded the panting prince into initiating an attack by swearing that if Izak ran him through, he would be allowed to stop and catch his breath.

“So you lied to him,” Saint Daven said when the twins were discussing it later.

Saint Galen shrugged. “It got him to attack. Besides, he couldn’t run a dead fish through.”

Twenty-six surprised no one with his aggression, and he handled a cutlass as if he’d been born to it.

They had hardly begun to circle when Saint Daven spotted the pirate’s free hand curled around an invisible hilt.

“What do you usually fight with in your off-hand? Cudgel? Belaying pin? Dagger?”

Twenty-six’s sandy brows jumped, then returned to his suspicious scowl. “A swordbreaker.”

“Been a while since Thornfield’s had a good dual wielder. I’ll get Master Smith to dig something up for you to practice with.”

Later, Saint Daven conferred with his brother. “I need to brush up on off-hand wielding. That foreign kid’s going to be teaching me before long if I don’t stay ahead of him.”

“Let me have a hack at him.”

One pirate-fight later, Saint Galen came to the same conclusion. Twenty-six was sure to lead the year in combat, though everyone knew that officially it would be reported that the king’s son held the top spot.

What the delta brat, Nine, lacked in experience, was more than made up for in sheer bloodthirsty eagerness. The boy was as wild as a winter wind, joyously hacking and slashing without a thought to protecting himself or conserving energy.

“Might have the kingdom’s littlest berserker on our hands,” Saint Daven told Grandmaster Heartless.

Though the newest crop of prospective Thorns was smaller than normal, Grandmaster believed it would prove one of the best to come through Thornfield in years. Only one student had had to be turned away as unteachable—a palsy in the hands couldn’t be corrected or overcome—and everyone who stayed had powerful reserves of blood magic.

The trick, Heartless thought as he watched the assessments, would be teaching young men who had relied all their lives on such magic to push through without it. The worst grafted Thorn was miles better trained and more skilled than any soldier, mercenary, or assassin in the Kingdom of Night, but if he ever came up against a Child of Helat and thought he could rely on blood magic to save him, he was as good as dead.