Nights at Thornfield were full of sweat, chores, lectures, and hazing. Izak felt as if he went from moonrise to moonset searching for a chance to take a breath.
Mandatory rest hours in the barracks were another story. The rest was needed—no one could keep up such rigorous training without recovery time, and no one could draw indefinitely on blood magic to keep going. Some gambling and games of chance were available most days until the bedtime curfew. Then it felt as if the sunlight hours dragged their heels endlessly.
The lonely slogs to nightfall nearly drove Izak mad. He lay awake thinking he would give up the crown all over just to hold a woman in his arms again. It had been almost two weeks since he’d left behind all that sweet flesh in the public house, but it felt like he’d abstained for a lifetime.
Izak wasn’t the only one suffering from insomnia. While the little runt snored in the bunk over Izak’s, across the room, Twenty-six tossed and turned like a pig on a spit.
The pirate’s eyes opened the moment Izak climbed out of bed.
Izak put his finger to his mouth.
“Don’t wake the loud one,” he whispered, gesturing to Nine’s bunk.
Twenty-six spotted the fact that Izak was headed away from the chamber pot and toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To the village. Sandy Hells, or whatever it was called.”
The pirate scowled—the only facial expression he knew how to make, so far as Izak had observed—and sat up. “You are not allowed to leave Thornfield grounds.”
“Light burn Thornfield,” Izak hissed. “I’m Teikru-blessed. If I don’t get to a woman soon, I may die. Or perhaps I’ll murder someone. The point is, I need to get out of this ugly herd of bulls and enjoy some beautiful feminine flowers.”
“Third- and fourth-years patrol the gatehouse.”
“If I have a lookout, I can make it past them. Help me, and I’ll stand you all the women and drinks you could possibly want.” He would promise the kingdom, his right arm, and all the gold between Thornfield and Siu Rial if he had to.
Twenty-six dropped back onto his bunk and turned his face to the wall.
“More for me,” Izak muttered, heading for the door.
“I’ll go!” Nine chirped.
Izak cringed. “Go back to sleep.”
“No, I want to go with you. To the whores.”
Some long-forgotten conscience balked at the thought of corrupting a child as young as Nine. In truth, he shouldn’t care. There were whores younger than Nine out there, and boys younger than Nine visiting them.
Still, he couldn’t shut out his palsied scruples entirely.
“You wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if you had one. Get back in bed.”
“Yes, I would! Back in Siu Carinal, I had twenty women a day and that many drinks besides!” Twenty was the highest number Nine had learned so far and, as such, featured in most of his exaggerations.
“Shut up before you get me caught.”
“No, I’m your lookout!”
“You’re not leaving this room until dusk.” Izak couldn’t believe he was caught up in an argument when he could be smoke stepping his way closer to the village. He could barely think past the clamoring in his groin and in his skull. “It’s the rule.”
Nine puffed up with fury. “If you can break ’em, I can too!”
“Forget it!” Izak caught hold of the energy in the boy’s blood and locked it in place. Nine wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
The runt flew into a helpless rage, cursing Izak and his ancestors all the way back to Khinet.
Izak ignored him and slipped out the door.
Stolen novel; please report.
***
Twenty-six listened to the door ease shut behind Four and lay glaring at the stonework. Behind him, Nine stormed and cursed.
Half a man couldn’t feel desire—he couldn’t feel anything but rage and grief and hate—but even if he had wanted a woman, it would have been his wife he longed for, not some filthy blood drinker who sold her favors to every dirter with a spare coin.
Twenty-six pressed his forehead to the cool stone, weathering a wave of landsickness.
He was growing used to the solid ground’s deathly lack of motion, at least enough that the overwhelming nausea had faded. It only swelled now and again. Daylight was worse than night, as he was not moving while the land around him also did not move, and he had nothing to distract him from the sickness. He couldn’t sleep through it. A lifetime sailing in the sun with only occasional overnight raids had attuned his body to sleep when darkness and anchors dropped.
On days when he did manage to doze, nightmares—daymares?—painted the insides of his eyelids with blood and fire and corpse-white attackers leaping out of unnatural, billowing black smoke. In other dreams, he held Mehet or returned to the Raen greatship and embraced his father and mother and was hailed as a man fully proven.
The latter dreams were much harder to recover from.
Most days, he lay awake contemplating the chains he was being trained to take on and wondering how he would kill a king he was enslaved to. From what he had learned in the arcaneries lectures, he would not have a choice once he was grafted; the compulsion would not allow him to kill the king, nor would it allow him to let someone else do the job. He would die to protect the monster.
In the weeks since his arrival, Twenty-six had studied the tides around Thornfield. Those were simple and predictable. The patrols were nothing more than senior students in rotation. A one-eyed lookout for a greatship would have made the dirter patrols seem like blind men.
It would be so easy to break free, but he could not leave this prison. Whenever he considered escaping, the corruption embedded in his veins twisted and contracted, trapping him like steel bands.
Take my Mark upon you.
Rage swelled like the landsickness in his gut.
He had chosen this. Steel bands and darkness and the stink of blood and dirt everywhere. Cursed. Disgraced. Corrupted.
Trapped.
Behind him, the door to the room opened and thumped closed.
Silence.
Twenty-six twisted to look over his shoulder.
Nine was gone.
***
Luck ran in Izak’s favor. He made it out of the barracks without waking another soul and met no late-day wanderers in the courtyard. The patrol at the gatehouse was made up of a pair of fourth-years Izak had observed to be particularly secure in their abilities—so secure that they frequently fell into laxness—and a few easily led third-years. Today, the elder group had convinced the younger to pass their guard playing dice.
They would fit in well at the palace.
Izak stopped in the shade of the gatehouse and eyed the thornknife graveyard beyond. The strenuous nights of training and choring had required constant streams of blood magic to keep him moving, and a smoke step in broad daylight would normally have cleaned him out.
But here again luck smiled on him. The coast’s fitful weather had turned; the sun was hidden behind dark thunderheads. Out on the beach, the endless din of the crashing surf had risen to quite a commotion.
He glanced the way of the dice players, absorbed in their game.
Before he took a step and disintegrated into smoke, however, he heard a shrill shout.
“There Four is, over yon! He’s fixing to run, him!”
***
Izak glared at the traitorous Nine. He wished he could throttle that snitch’s scrawny, dirty neck.
All around the bailey, his glower was mirrored on the puffy, sleepy faces of his fellow Thornfield students and several of the masters. The whole school had been dragged out of bed to witness that there would be no distinction between prince and commoner inside these walls. At least not when it came to punishment.
“Either I go with you, or you don’t go nowhere,” the little churl had hissed when the foreign Master Malice had led Izak past. Even now, Nine beamed in triumph from his place amongst the bigger students.
Grandmaster Heartless stepped forward.
“Four left the grounds of Thornfield without authorization. He attempted to entice two more first-year students into flouting the same rule. As such, he will receive twenty lashes.” The grandmaster’s pale blue eyes cut to a face in the crowd. “In addition, Twenty-six, who had full knowledge of Four’s plans, did nothing to stop him, nor did he alert the masters. His consent to this blatant disregard for the rules has earned him ten lashes.”
“That’s a crock of rot!” Izak snapped. “He had nothing to do with this! I acted alone!”
“It would not have been possible for you to act if he had stopped you.” Grandmaster gestured at Master Saint Galen to proceed.
The gold-eyed whipmaster went to pull Twenty-six out of the crowd, but the pirate shook him off and stalked to a place beside Izak under his own power.
“This is a bald-faced miscarriage of justice,” Izak argued.
“In the eyes of someone who is not interested in honor, perhaps,” Twenty-six said.
“Shut up, this isn’t some legal sciences lecture to be picked apart and debated. Going to the village wasn’t your idea.” Izak rounded on the grandmaster. “I am fully and solely responsible.”
Twenty-six didn’t bat an eye. “A man is responsible for the actions of the invalids on his watch.”
“I’m trying to—You’re calling me the invalid? I’m trying to keep you from being whipped unnecessarily, you ingrate savage!”
“Which proves you are incapable of making wise decisions. Even your dirter Masters know that to diffuse the consequences of wrong is ultimately more harmful than allowing a man to suffer the full broadside for his actions.”
Seeing he was getting nowhere with his roommate, Izak turned to Grandmaster Heartless.
“Fine. If he insists on taking responsibility, then let the savage have his way. Give him all thirty lashes.”
The pirate’s scowl deepened. “Yes, and allow the invalid to continue in his blissful foolishness.”
“It’s late, and we elderly don’t resist the sun the way we once did.” The grandmaster squinted up at the pale gray light filtering through the cloudy sky. “Give them thirty lashes apiece, Master Saint Galen, then send the students back to bed.”