Twenty-six’s previous lash marks tore open again, but he remained standing under his own power. He may only be half a man now, but that was still more man than these dirters. Four was on his knees before half the scourging was complete. He had to be supported by two other students for the remainder.

A heavy afternoon rain fell as the dirters returned to their barracks. Four was deserted to lie bleeding and shivering in the mud.

Twenty-six caught Nine by the skinny wrist before the boy could sprint away. The motion sent pain flaring through the torn flesh in the Ocean Rover’s back, but he ignored it.

“Take his arm.” Between the two of them, they managed to drag the taller Four to their room and deposit him on his bunk.

Twenty-six went to the narrow window and looked out at the rain-spotted whitecaps as they crashed on the rocky shore, then returned to his bunk. He needed another pot of salve, but he had enough to keep the bandages from sticking to his wounds, at least for one day.

Four groaned. “I’m going to need blood. Which one of you volunteers?”

“You shoulda stoled some medicine from the masters,” Nine said.

“I oughta take some outta your hide, me,” Four imitated the boy’s high-pitched drawl. That seemed to use what little energy he had left, however, because he dropped his head forward onto his bed. “Go to the healers and fetch two wineskins full of blood.”

“Two?”

“Haven’t you learned to count that high yet?”

“’Course I have! I ain’t no dummy, me!” Nine stalked to the door. “I woulda knowed to take me with you when you went. Better get that straight in your head afore next time.”

“Easier to cut out your tongue. Then you can’t tattle.”

The door slammed behind the boy.

Twenty-six set to binding his own wounds. Dirters had no control over their emotions. They were all children.

“Why carry me back?” Four asked.

Twenty-six ignored him.

“I know you can hear me. You’re a stubborn savage, but you’re not deaf.”

Twenty-six shifted an errant bandage. “Why did you intervene when the grandmaster judged that I should be whipped?”

“Because it was wrong. I made my decision, only I should have been liable for it.”

“You claim fault and expect the consequences to fall accordingly.”

Four made a disgusted noise. “Don’t think this means I care about your silly systems of judgment or laws of honor.”

“They’re not mine.”

“They aren’t your pirate god’s, either. That’s nothing but piss in the wind. Keep spouting it, and it’ll come back all over you. Twice as bad, if the strong gods hear you.”

I was Raen. I do not fear death or dirters, and “I do not fear dirter gods. If they can’t hear me when I speak this plainly, then they are not gods.”

The door banged off the wall, kicked open by Nine. He’d come back with a single wineskin.

“Healer Prime told me you couldn’t have none on account a’ you’re s’posed to be learning to do blood magic without, but I snatched this whilst he was turned away.”

Four grimaced. “Smart thinking, runt. Get all three of us scourged.”

“Nah, they ain’t borned a soul yet that can catch me stealing.” Nine dumped the wineskin onto Four’s bed. “Once I even snatched a pair of smallclothes off’n a gal right afore her beau could talk ’em off. They neither one seen me.” Nine cackled. “Got a mighty surprise later on, them.”

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“Let me guess.” Four winced as he sat up. “Her smallclothes were salk, too?”

“Shiniest you ever seen.”

The stopper squelched, and the stink of blood filled the room. Sudden sickness rose in Twenty-six’s gut that had nothing to do with the dead, motionless earth beneath his feet. The pale, dead flesh of a monster crammed in his mouth. The corruption pouring down his throat and setting his blood on fire.

Twenty-six tied off his bandages and cut them, fighting back the urge to retch.

“They were probably from your importer Juan.” Four’s amused voice clanged in Twenty-six’s head. The peak of the dirter’s throat bobbed as he took a long draught of blood. He sighed and wiped his mouth. “Don’t you hate it when your salk smallclothes get snatched, Twenty-six?”

“What is salk?”

“’Course a pirate don’t know salks,” Nine said, rolling his eyes.

Four gulped down more blood, then wiped his mouth with his hand and held out the skin. “Drink some of this. I’m not great at healing others, but if we’ve both got the same blood in our bodies, I can start repairing your wounds.”

Twenty-six shrugged his shirt on and went back to the window. Stormy gray afternoon would soon give way to a red dusk. Two hundred yards from the walls, the waves crashed against the sand and rocks. Out past the sand bars, high seas.

Out of reach.

“Wounds heal fastest in the sun and the salt,” he said finally. All of it, out of reach.

“Is that how you healed those old scars on your back?”

Four could not understand, no blood drinker could. Those stripes had been a mark of pride, of wisdom, of rising to command. A raed commander without stripes was not one who could be trusted to lead and could certainly never be trusted to give out just punishments to wayward raedrs.

“You have never been scourged before.” Twenty-six was not blind. He’d noticed how the other young men and boys fawned over Four, as if speaking with him gave them special status. His roommate was someone of high standing within dirter society.

“I certainly have now,” Four said. “Don’t know why you put up with this two times a week.”

Twenty-six didn’t put up with the dirters’ scourgings. Holding to the truth in the face of their lies was only a minor way he could redeem himself for his failure on the beach, his failure as an Ocean Rover, as a man.

“I never been scourged, me,” Nine said proudly, hauling his skinny body up onto the upper bunk. “And I won’t never be.”

Four snorted. “Wait ’til they find out they’re a skin of blood short and you’re the only one who went to the healer’s since it went missing.”

“Having now suffered the lash, how many lashes would you give a man who attempted to leave as you did?” Twenty-six asked Four.

“I wouldn’t coop up an army of horny young men in a cage for years on end in the first place. I’d build a whoring house right next to the battlements and keep in good standing with the madam. She couldn’t possibly have a better customer base.”

“If you had to assign a punishment.”

“If I absolutely can’t get out of it, one lash for disobedience,” Four said. “For actual crimes, five or ten. Never so many as thirty.”

“Not even for a rapist or the murderer of a child?”

“I’ve got a headsman in every city, why waste the evening scourging the repugnant scoundrels when I could just execute them and enjoy the rest of the night with a beautiful woman and a jug of port? Unless I hated whoever they had murdered. Then—” He made a gracious, forgiving gesture, but winced as it pulled at his healing wounds. “—they can go with my blessing.”

Not There is a headsman in every city, but I’ve got a headsman in every city. From the blood drinker titles and ranks Twenty-six was being forced to learn in their courtly lessons, Four could only hold a handful of titles to make such a claim.

“You would have mercy because you know what it feels like to be scourged?” Twenty-six asked.

Four scoffed. “You want me to say that I would be merciful because I know their pain? I wouldn’t. The system that would punish them is just another idiotic construction. I wouldn’t hold myself to it, so I wouldn’t hold another man to it, either.” Four flashed a smile that showed dimples like stab wounds beside his mouth and like channels high on his cheekbones. Twenty-six had seen him use it on the other students when he wanted an ally. “I can give you a place high enough to flout authority, too, if you care to join me.”

Even if it were a jest, who but a man in line for the blood drinkers’ throne would think about wielding influence like that?

Nine leaned over the edge of the bunk and said sleepily, “I’m good at flouting, me. Once I flouted twenty sheriffs so bad they went running, a-hoopin’ and a-hollerin’.”

“Fine, you can join too, Nine. We three will thumb our noses at Thornfield’s rules.”

Twenty-six shook his head.

“Why not?” Four demanded. “Don’t tell me you’ve already fallen in love with your Kingdom of Night overlords.”

“I have no overlords,” Twenty-six spat.

That used to be true. But now he was Marked, sold to a dirter master by his own cowardice. He tamped down the hurricane anger until he could speak without shaming himself.

“Why do you work so hard to convince me that your way of thinking is correct?”

“You said I wouldn’t get past the patrols on the wall, not that I couldn’t get out of Thornfield. You know a way out of this prison—” Four grinned his allying grin again. “—and if I get you on my side, you’ll tell me what it is.”

“’Zat true?” Nine yawned. His blinks were rapidly sailing toward sleep, but he was trying hard to keep up with their conversation. “Do you really know a way we can get out, ya pirate scum?”

Twenty-six didn’t know a way past the patrols—Four had overestimated—but he did suspect one. He just couldn’t test it for himself because any time he considered it, the Mark took hold and stopped him.

The dirter king’s son was asking him how to escape. There was an answer in this, somewhere.

And if I can get you on my side, you’ll tell me what it is.

“How well do you swim?” Twenty-six asked.

Four grinned. “Have you ever thrown a rock in a pond?”