The first indications that Thornfield had made a mistake in admitting Nine came six months into training, when he began to get the hang of sword work beyond vicious chopping that would make a woodsman blush.

Nine’s bald spots had grown back in, and the hair was even starting to take on a lustrous brown color. He was gaining weight, and he often complained of the splintering pains in his legs that heralded growth. With regular meals, malnourished brats from the low streets tended to catch up to the height they ought to be quickly. When their growth and eating evened out, whatever strange habits they’d created in their awkward stages could be corrected and their newfound fat could be replaced with muscle.

But one deadly habit caught the weapons master’s eyes.

“Stop!” Saint Daven caught Nine’s wrist mid-hack. He raised a hand and smacked the boy in the face.

“Don’t!” the boy shrieked.

“Then stop me.”

A dozen more times proved Nine couldn’t. It also brought the truth pouring out in a tearful, furious tantrum.

Saint Daven went directly to Grandmaster. “Our little berserker’s blind in his right eye. Sounds like an infection did it.”

Grandmaster frowned. “Did he say how long ago he lost sight in it?”

“I didn’t think to ask.” Nine might have mentioned it for all the young weapons master knew, but understanding that heavy Siu Carinal accent was doubly hard when the boy was worked up.

“Take him to Healer Prime immediately. If we’re lucky, he can do something about it.”

The second, calmer relation of Nine’s tale of his injury included seventy-eight dockworkers, every one of them trying to beat his skull flat. He’d come off the better of them, though.

“Ain’t nobody took a notion to come after me nor Pretty since,” he concluded proudly.

Healer Prime was only half listening as he examined the boy’s eye. “And how long ago did you say you were hit?”

“Back in flood season, that was. The moon was hiding behind the ghost city, so I knowed that night was gonna be bad medicine ’fore I ever left the Closes.”

“There’s nothing I can do for it after this much time,” Healer Prime told Grandmaster in his study late that afternoon. “Even with royal blood magic, that eye will never see again.”

“That’s it, then. He may learn to compensate somewhat, but a soldier with half a field of vision will always be at a disadvantage,” Grandmaster Heartless said. “Nine will be dismissed at dusk after he’s breakfasted.”

Saint Daven understood that Thornfield couldn’t stoop to producing subpar Thorns. Every man who was grafted had to uphold the martial excellence of the order, because any one of them could be called upon to guard the king. Boys who couldn’t keep up with Thornfield’s demanding standards were sent back out into the world to deal with the consequences they thought they’d left behind.

“Shame to waste that much piss and swagger,” Saint Galen said, chewing over the news with him late that day in their shared room in the masters’ tower. “The kid goes after everybody he fights like he believes his own stories.”

“Almost as bad as Cutter was.” Saint Daven tapped the blade of an old dagger on his knee without really noticing he’d brought it out. His sword Wild had been melted down for scrap after Lord Paius’s death and his thornknife had splintered when his soul shattered, but the dagger he’d held onto. “Fast as oiled lightning, too. In a few years, he could’ve had the skill to back up that mouth.”

The grandmaster was right, of course. A half-blind Thorn could never be an effective shield between his lord and danger, no more than a half-mad, disgraced Thorn could.

***

Grandmaster Heartless was on his way into the great hall for breakfast the next evening when Saint Daven confronted him.

“Give me a month of extra lessons with the little berserker,” he said. “Let me see if I can negate his eye as a weakness. If he’s not better than a man with two good eyes by then, I’ll kick him out and reimburse His Majesty for the room and board.”

Grandmaster’s bushy white brows drew down in a glower. “I didn’t make my ruling lightly, Master Saint Daven. This isn’t a game of wagers. We’re talking about a boy’s life.”

“I apologize, Grandmaster. I didn’t mean any disrespect, but it seems like a waste to me. Nine’s got more potential than half his class. He’s got the blood magic and the willingness to learn, and he was skilled enough to keep us in the dark about his eye for this long. There’s the chance that, with the right tool set, he could cancel out the disadvantage.”

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Grandmaster glared into the younger man’s gold eyes, but Saint Daven didn’t look away.

It was the first time since the broken Thorn’s return to the school that he’d shown a flicker of interest in anything. The mad young man might be the best fighter the school had ever produced. Heartless had feared he’d been completely ruined by the cruel hand of fate—until this very moment when, it seemed, Saint Daven had decided to come back to life.

“They’re all going to die, Grandmaster,” he said in a low voice. “If Nine can fill a gap in defenses in the meantime, why waste him? It might be an unpardonable offense to give the king less than the best, but a private posting with some minor noble? Surely the berserker could manage that until the king came for his lord.”

“Not every lord turns on the king,” Heartless said.

But many were accused of it. The results came to the same.

Grandmaster perused the hall, boys and men scattered around the tables, as many empty spots as filled ones. Less than half the number the school had housed in Heartless’s day, and dwindling more every year. Boys with blood magic were getting fewer and farther between, while the demand for Thorns stayed the same.

“If he doesn’t meet and exceed Thornfield standards by the tournament next month, he’s gone,” Grandmaster said.

Saint Daven bowed. “Thank you, Grandmaster.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Heartless spotted Nine at a table, eating everything he could get his hands on. “You promised remuneration for his room and board if you fail. You’d better hope he doesn’t. I doubt your purse is deep enough to cover a full month.”

***

“I cain’t go on whore trips no more, me,” Nine announced sadly to his roommates. They had been back to the village three times in the last six months, but in that time, Nine had become a dedicated drinker. “The masters’re making me do extra sword lessons in the daytime on account a’ my bad eye.”

“Your lard wasn’t going to fit through that grating much longer anyway.” Izak looked up from his book. “Bad eye, you say? What happened to it?”

Sighing, Nine climbed up onto his shelf bed and flopped down. The wood crackled under his recently added weight. He wasn’t fat, but he had gone from skeletal to awkwardly lumpy, and the bed had been rickety to begin with.

“Riverboat-load a’ broke-free bloodslaves got after me. ’Bout a thousand, I reckon.”

Coming from Nine, the lack of gory details and the missing last-minute rescue of his twin were tantamount to a cry for help.

“That doesn’t tell me anything about your eye,” Izak prompted.

“It don’t see no more!” Nine exploded. He leaned over the edge of his bed and waved a hand in front of his face for emphasis. “It got all dark, then it just went away! I didn’t know I was s’posed to have both eyes so’s I could fight.” He flopped back over and kicked the ceiling. “I was fighting fine with just one. That fool master had to get bothered about it…”

“Partial blindness explains why you always turn your head,” Twenty-six said, leaving the archer loop to join the conversation.

“Huh.” Izak squinted up at the runt, tapping his chin. “I never thought about it, but you do. Every time you look me in the eye, you cock your head right.”

“No, I don’t!” The runt was doing it right then. A sort of quarter-turn and a slight angle that must present him with a better view from his left eye. “And worse, if’n I don’t take these extra lessons, they’ll toss me out! Being a Thorn was s’posed to get me a bunch a’ gold and a uphill placement for us. She’s gotta get out of the Closes, Pretty,” he said earnestly. “They’re dangerous for girls.”

Izak looked at Twenty-six to see if he would mention that this sister was probably already dead. For once, the pirate kept his unnecessary bluntness to himself.

“Extra lessons will make you a better warrior,” Twenty-six said, “and if you become the best warrior at Thornfield, you will be grafted to your dirter king. That will lead to more gold, won’t it?”

Clearly Nine hadn’t considered that. “Yeah, maybe so!”

“And maybe by the time your extra lessons are complete, you’ll have worked off some of that extra lard,” Izak added, going back to his reading.

***

Saint Daven’s idea for saving Nine’s place at Thornfield had very little to do with the boy’s sword work and everything to do with his style of attack.

“A blind berserker won’t last long,” he explained on their first day of extra lessons. “One counter from the wrong side and you’re dead. We can’t change your vision, so we have to change theirs. What I’m going to show you… Maybe you’ll get the hang of it. Odds are you won’t. We have a month to find out.”

Nine puffed up. “I’ll do it in half that, me. What is it?”

“You’re going to use the blood magic to disappear.”

“I seen that once.” Nine made an exploding motion with his grubby hand. “Poof, into smoke.”

“You’re talking about disincorporation. Smoke stepping is a technique of royal blood magic. The royal family can do it, and the king can even move others great distances along with him, but smoke is still visible. You’re not going to be.”

“But I seen somebody do it afore, and I’m a fair study, me.”

Saint Daven slashed a hand through the air. “Forget about that. You can’t smoke step—you don’t have the royal blood magic. Making yourself invisible is entirely different. You can still be wounded; you can still be killed. But if you get it right, you can’t be seen. That’s where you’ll get your advantage.”

The Royal Thorns who had survived the massacre in the Cinterlands would give anything to know how Saint Daven had killed so many of their brothers—his brothers—before his lord and his fellow stolen Thorns were dead. But the truth was, most of them probably couldn’t do anything with the answer if they knew how he’d done it. It took a certain kind of mind to use blood magic that way.

Saint Daven never talked about the Cinterlands Rebellion. He didn’t want to now. But there were things the kid needed to understand to pull this off.

“Before we get started,” he warned Nine, “you need to know that if you tell anyone what I’m about to tell you, I’ll kill you.”

Whatever Nine saw in his face then must have scared the kid, because Nine’s twin swords flashed up between them.

“I don’t spread no tales, me!” the boy blustered. “Anyhow, if you’re fixin’ to take after me, that’s the last fixin’ you’ll ever do.”

Saint Daven nodded. “Good. We understand each other. Let’s get to work.”

Then he disappeared.