Izak swam as well as any other prince who had only ever splashed around in a palace bath. He understood the basics—close your eyes, flap your arms, don’t try to breathe while you’re underwater—but the finer points he was fuzzy on.

Thornfield had a narrow bathhouse inside the shed behind the keep. The long, narrow, thigh-deep bath was fed by a siphon that brought water up from the freshwater aquifer below Thornfield. Water poured from a spout into the trough, which was banked on either side by a bed of coals tended by the first-years. To avoid returning contaminated water to the aquifer, a series of gated drains had been built into the lowest point of the slightly sloped bath. When the slide was pulled each morning, the dirty water drained. Then the spout was opened and the bath refilled, ready for bathers the next night.

It wasn’t the steaming luxury Izak was used to, and it lacked the beautiful attendants to scrub his back, but he made use of it regularly.

Twenty-six did as well, but the pirate preferred to bathe late in the day, when the rest of the students and masters had gone to bed. In fact, he had volunteered for bathhouse cleaning duty so that he was always the first to wash in the new water. Despite Izak’s assertions that it was obviously untrue, Twenty-six held to the strange notion that bathwater was tainted the moment someone climbed in.

Nine maintained that, clean or tainted, water was bad medicine one oughtn’t fool with. He never used the bathhouse, but when he heard what his roommates were planning, he suddenly couldn’t live without being involved.

Izak wanted the runt to take a blood-oath first that he wouldn’t turn them in to the masters.

Nine scowled. “Blood-oath me that you ain’t gonna lock me up and leave me behind again!”

“Fair enough.” The prince borrowed a sword from the storage shed in the bailey and sliced his palm open.

The runt took the sword without hesitation and did the same. They shook hands, smearing the blood and Nine’s ever-present layer of filth into their open wounds, much to the pirate’s disgust.

When the students had been released from training for midnight luncheon, the trio waited for the bailey to clear, then made their way to the back of the bathhouse.

From the rear wall, the bath’s drain flowed into a culvert that carried Thornfield’s wastewater out of the bailey and into the inlet between Thornfield and the mainland. A grating had been built beneath the battlements to prevent creatures larger than the crabs that collected there from swimming in, but the bars were corroded by the constant mixing of salt water and fresh. The pirate swore he had seen a ray’s wings break the surface there once, a beast too large to have fit through the grating if the bars continued beneath the water.

Four looked at the culvert in dismay. “You want me to dive beneath that sludge and find out if the grating has rotted away enough to slip through?”

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It looked particularly thick just then. The tides were down, so no waves were flowing in and pulling waste out. Even Nine wrinkled up his nose at the stink.

“Not until late in the day,” Twenty-six said. “While I see to the bathhouse duties, you will check the grate, then wash the filth from yourself. Then I will drain the bath and refill it with clean water.”

Izak grimaced. “Why don’t you check it?”

“I am not invested in the results. I do not care if you make it to the village or die of lack of female company, as you claim you will.”

“And we can’t do this after you’ve taught me how to swim?”

“What is the point of teaching you if there is no opening?”

For a split second, Izak seriously wondered whether a day in a woman’s arms was worth it.

Stupid question. Of course it was.

***

“It’s only a half-grating!” Izak reported happily later that day, when he found Twenty-six alone in the bathhouse. Sick-smelling sludge dripped from his hair and clothes. “Reaches down to about this far off the culvert bottom—” He measured the distance with his hands, about two feet. “—then nothing.”

“You need to bathe,” Twenty-six said, backing off a step.

Izak grinned. “Forget bathing, let’s go! Right now. No one’s in the bailey, and the patrol just passed by on their rounds. We’ll have all the time in the world.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Twenty-six stopped scooping the ashes from the coal bed. “Because I do not custom prostitutes. Because you cannot swim. Because you were scourged less than seven days ago for trying to leave, and the patrols will keep a weather eye for at least another seven days. Because the wind is blowing a squall ashore. Choose one and let that be the answer.”

“Fine, but I can’t wait long.” Izak started stripping his filthy clothing off and dropping it onto the floor in loud, wet smacks. He climbed into the bath, a cloud of grime swirling away from him as he sank into the warm water. “Tonight, after lunch and before second combat training, you start teaching me to swim.”

Twenty-six stopped scooping ashes and stood, his gray-green eyes locking on Izak’s. The pirate always kept a stern expression in place, but there was something deadlier than usual in his glare.

“I do not take orders from any dirter.” As if he would cut Izak in half if only he’d had a sword in hand.

Izak smiled and raised his hands to show he was no threat. Also to catch hold of the energies in his roommate’s blood and stop him where he stood if he had to.

“See? I can’t even think, I’ve been celibate for so long. What I meant to say was, ‘Twenty-six, won’t you begin passing on your vast and brilliant swimming wisdom to me tonight?’ I promise my manners improve after a night of debauchery.”

The bathhouse door banged open, admitting Nine. The runt had been sentenced to the kitchens again for talking and generally distracting other students during lectures, and had only just finished with the extra duties.

“Didja figure out…” Nine trailed off, looking from Izak to Twenty-six. His eyes lit up as he sensed the electricity crackling in the air.

“Are we gonna brawl, us?” The runt had become particularly fond of scrapping with the other twelve- and thirteen-year-old new recruits, and he was always looking for an excuse outside training to fight with bare knuckles, as that wasn’t a flogging offense.

Izak ducked under the water to scrub the filth from his face, then surfaced, spouting water from his mouth and nose.

“Of course not,” the prince said, pushing wet hair off his forehead. “I was just thanking Twenty-six for tonight’s upcoming swimming lesson. And he was reminding me not to get too cocky out there or he’ll let me float out to sea.” With exaggerated casualness, Izak dug grit and sludge from his ears. “Did I understand that correctly, Twenty-six?”

After a moment, the pirate nodded. “We understand one another.”