Nine launched the twin swords across the room. They crashed into the wall and bounced across the stone floor, raising an almighty racket and waking Four and Twenty-six.

“What in the name of Teikru is wrong with you!” Four bellowed.

The pirate scum stopped his tossing and turning to glare at Nine, too.

“Ain’t me what’s wrong!” Nine grabbed the bedframe, hopped up, and flopped onto the straw tick. The wood groaned and crackled under his weight. “And I ain’t going to no more extra lessons, neither!”

Nine folded knee to chest and threw a vicious kick at the stone ceiling over the bed.

That was the last abuse the bunk would take. The bolts tore free of the aging wood, and the bed collapsed.

Four rolled onto the floor, narrowly missing being crushed by debris.

The impact on the bunk below flattened Nine’s lungs. The former Brat rolled around in the splintered wood, gasping for air.

Finally, mercifully, breath returned in a huge whoop. Nine curled into a ball, fighting hot, angry, embarrassed tears.

Four blew out a long breath. “I knew you were getting too fat for that rickety bundle of sticks.”

“Well, I hate you. Didja know that?”

That made Four laugh.

“Sounds like you need a trip to the village, runt.” He reached out a hand to help Nine up off the cracked boards and torn straw tick.

Nine almost hocked a wad into his palm. But they were brothers. And anyways, it was that ranty ol’ crow of a master who was the real problem, always cawing on the same stuff, squawking like Nine was dumb as a post and half as slow as one.

“It’s nearly dusk,” Twenty-six said. “You cannot make it to the village and back before training begins for the night.”

“Anyhow, I never run away scairt, no matter who’s took after me.” Nine snatched Four’s hand and was hauled clear of the wreckage. “You’re my brothers, ain’t you both?”

“Of course we are,” Four answered.

“And brothers are loyal. That means you gotta help me.”

Four shrugged. “I suppose.”

Twenty-six’s eyes narrowed. “Help with what?”

***

The following day, Nine was already in the bailey waiting for his extra lessons when Saint Daven arrived.

“I’m a-calling for a wager,” the boy said.

Saint Daven snorted. “You don’t have anything I want.”

“Who’s caring what you want? I’m wagering if’n I beat you today, I get to stop all these extra lessons flat.”

“No.”

“’Til the end of the year, then.”

“No.”

“End of the month.”

Saint Daven raised an eyebrow. “Do you think I like spending my days yelling at an ungrateful, lazy brat any more than you enjoy ignoring me?”

“I ain’t worried about what you like,” the boy sneered. “You in this wager or ain’t ya?”

Saint Daven took a defensive pose. “Beat me before sundown and you can have a week off.”

Nine raised his twin swords to an attack posture. The boy was already fading to nothingness, bright sunlight filtering through his face and chest.

“Two weeks.” Nine was gone, but a faint shadow remained beneath him.

This was going to be a repeat of the day before.

“Fine,” Saint Daven agreed. “Two weeks it is.”

Nine lost their first battle in much the same way he’d lost on the previous day. His fighting was more skillful—picking his attacks, defending when necessary—but he still lost. Three times in a row, he lost.

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“The wager ain’t done yet!” Nine wiped at his busted lip with the back of one dirty forearm, smearing the blood onto his cheek. “There’s still half a day left yet.”

Saint Daven returned to an opening posture. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Once again, the boy disappeared and the shadow remained.

Then a second shadow appeared.

And a third.

Saint Daven eyed them as they closed in from all sides. Nine’s twin swords, as long and narrow as the boy’s skinny arms, stuck out of the hands of one shadow. A swordstaff crossed the body of the second. The last showed a heavy curved blade and straight, serrated dagger.

So Nine had recruited the prince and the pirate, had he?

“That’s a lot of invisibility to keep up,” Saint Daven said. “Lots of blood magic to go through in the midday sun. Must be complicated to keep track of them all, too.”

“Sure ’nough is,” Nine agreed, amusement in his reedy voice.

Saint Daven darted inside the range of the shadow-swordstaff before the prince could bring it to bear and before the dual wielders could attack. The staff moved, but Saint Daven hooked an arm around it. As expected, solid wood was trapped beneath his arm.

“Can’t mirror three shadows at once?” Saint Daven spun, swinging the prince into the pirate’s shadow.

“Nope.” Nine’s shadow raced at him from behind.

Saint Daven wheeled around, whipping his blades to meet the boy. Steel clanged against steel. Sparks flew from the point between the visible and the invisible.

Then suddenly, the boy’s shadow twisted. The pirate and the prince, too. The three shades twined together, wavered, and jumped to different points of the compass.

“I cain’t mirror ’em, me,” Nine said. Steel whistled toward Saint Daven’s ribs. “But I figure this’s close enough.”

Close enough turned out to be a ninety-degree divergence. The pirate’s shadow came from Saint Daven’s left while the cutlass and swordbreaker cut toward his back. The prince’s shadow stabbed from the right while the swordstaff plunged in from his front. Meanwhile, Nine was everywhere, hacking, lunging, attacking.

Then the angle changed to forty-five degrees. Then fifteen. Then back to ninety.

It was like being pecked apart by an army of scavengers. Saint Daven blocked and parried and countered, but the whirl of shadows and weapons kept changing. As soon as he resolved the discrepancy between shadow and solid being, Nine changed it.

A skilled swordfighter could defeat two opponents if he got lucky. A fully enchanted Thorn might manage three, provided they weren’t also Thorns and he took them out before they started to wear him down.

But the constant change of view forced Saint Daven into a drawn-out contest, and the strain of blocking five weapons with two required enormous amounts of stamina. His reserve of blood magic was drained in minutes. The last time he’d used so much blood magic in such a short time…

Ghosts of the Cinterlands started to scream. Blood poured in rivers across flagstones, soaked carpets, splashed around his boots. The humid stink of slaughter filled the tight confines of the antechamber, mingling with sweat and sour breath and pierced bowels. Saint Daven reached for replenishment from the energies of his brother Thorns, the men he was cutting down, but found himself blocked.

None of the Royal Thorns that he’d killed at House Mattius had been able to create a shield like that.

The hot, reeking deathtrap of an antechamber faded, and the sunlit bailey came back into focus. This wasn’t the Cinterlands. One of the boys he was fighting—fighting on a wager, a frustrated brat’s attempt to get out of training, not fighting to protect a lord dead and gone some four years ago now—one of the boys had formed a wall between him and their energies.

Saint Daven fought on without blood magic, as he’d learned to do in this very bailey. It was a losing battle, of course, but a Thorn fought until he could fight no more. Sweat soaked his clothing and flew like rain with every motion. From every side, the shadows whirled and danced and disoriented.

The swordstaff hooked the back of his heel. Saint Daven lifted that foot to take away the leverage.

A small, sweaty body thumped into him from the opposite side. They crashed to the ground in a pile of arms, legs, and blades.

Luck was all that kept them from cutting themselves to ribbons on their swords. Saint Daven’s left arm was pinned between himself and the boy, but he swung the sword in his right.

Only to have that hand stomped back down by an unseen boot. The pirate’s cutlass rested against his throat.

The partial invisibility and distortion dropped.

The red face of a sweaty, dirty boy grinned down at Saint Daven.

“We won, us!” Nine whooped and jumped up. “It was just like the pirate scum said, you couldn’t keep going ’gainst the three of us without no blood magic!”

The pirate in question was glaring down at the weapons master with something close to respect.

“You lasted longer than expected,” Twenty-six said. “I thought a blood drinker would fail much sooner cut off from his blood magic.”

Four huffed a laugh. “He’s always underestimating us abominations.”

Saint Daven stood and dusted himself off. “You came up with the shielding plan,” he said to Twenty-six. Then he nodded at the former crown prince. “And you executed it. And the angle distortion—”

“That was all mine, you gronchety ol’ crow! And I was the one what said we three brothers oughta all scrap with you at once, ’cuz you’da never expected it.” The boy stopped dancing around and pointed at the master. “See, I can think! Told you my way was better’n perfect invisible!”

“It’s not better. It’s different.”

“Whupped you, different!”

“You didn’t beat me,” Saint Daven said. “Your army beat me, and you helped them.”

“They helped me with my plan. If’n you wanted a one-on-one fight, you shoulda said it had to be so when you wagered.” Nine spun on his heel and headed for the barracks. He waved over his shoulder. “See how you like two weeks not foolin’ with extra lessons, ’cuz I’m fixing to like it just fine.”

The prince offered Saint Daven a smirking, courtly bow before following his gloating friend. The pirate let a terse nod suffice.

Technically, as a master, Saint Daven could have the little brat scourged for disrespect.

But it was the first time he’d found anything funny in a long while. And in truth, hiding three attackers at once while distorting their shadows was the most impressive blood magic he’d ever seen.

Saint Daven headed for the Masters’ Tower, trying to hide the smile on his face. The little berserker was right, he was looking forward to having his days back for a while.