To celebrate their victory, Nine made a stop off at the kitchens—he was intimately familiar with that area of Thornfield, given the amount of time he spent in punitive sculling duties—and returned to their seaside chamber with a bottle of wine apiece.

“Light burn me.” Izak turned his bottle so that he could see the full vintner’s mark. He couldn’t believe it. He yanked the cork out and breathed in the rich, complex, earthy scent of Adyena wine, one of the rarest and most sought-after vintages in the kingdom. “Where in the strong gods’ hells did you get properly aged Adyena?”

“Cook keeps ’em down in the cellar, but they’re just for when Grandmaster calls for a bottle. He’s got a vestment, him.”

Twenty-six and Izak exchanged glances. Sometimes it took an effort to puzzle out what Nine had been told versus what he thought he’d heard.

“What’s a vestment?” Izak asked. Defining terms was usually the fastest way to get to the bottom of things with the runt.

“I don’t know, me, but it brings Grandmaster a buncha bottles ever’ year from that Idenya place. Cook says he gets more of it than the king. You oughta see down there. It like to choke him, there’s so much wine.”

Twenty-six held his bottle out. “Put it back.”

“I won’t, neither!”

Izak sighed and stuck the cork back in his as well. “The pirate scum’s right, Nine. If Grandmaster’s invested money in the vintners, he’ll know how many of each bottle he has. It’s going to be missed.”

“But Cook says he only calls for a bottle every couple months or if somebody comes a-visiting! Grandmaster don’t hardly know it’s there, him.” Nine held up his bottle and tapped the year mark. “This one’s been around longer’n a bad cough. He done forgot about it.”

“The age means it’s more valuable, not that it’s been overlooked.”

“Aw, you scairt dogs! I’m drinkin’ mine, and if you ain’t yours, I’ll drink that too.”

“You may kill yourself on wine this rich. And if he doesn’t—” Izak grinned at Twenty-six, who as of a day ago had become Nine’s downstairs neighbor. “—keep an ear out for running water.”

The only time the younger boy had actually wet the bed was after that first all-day drinking session at the public house, but Twenty-six wasn’t going to chance it. He got up and pulled down the straw tick from the last remaining upper bunk.

“If you drink those, you sleep on the floor,” he told Nine.

***

Izak dreamed of a host of beautiful nymphs attending to his every desire. It was one of the best dreams he’d had since arriving at Thornfield.

So of course it was interrupted.

A whimper cut through that beautiful sea of flesh and debauchery—small, thin, terrified.

Izak almost opened his eyes, but he stopped just in time and squeezed them shut tight instead. If he looked, he would find himself in a dank dungeon corridor, and he would be compelled to step forward, to walk until he found the wreckage of what had been his uncle, cringing in the corner of his cell.

The whimper came again, but this time it wavered into an airy whine.

“Eketra curse it, fine,” he muttered. He opened his eyes and looked around.

Rather than the dungeons of Siu Rial, Izak found himself in his room in the barracks of Thornfield’s west wall. Gray-green light came through the archer’s loop, dark but not the sort of dark that heralded dusk. Thunder rumbled and heavy surf crashed, confirming that a storm had rolled in.

Across the room, Twenty-six slept, if not peacefully, then at least deeply. His eyelids twitched and, now and again, his arms or legs jolted. The pitiful whine hadn’t woken him.

Izak rolled up onto his elbow.

Nine knelt on the straw tick in a pool of blood, staring down at his bloody hands.

“Light, Nine, what did you do?”

Izak stumbled out of bed. He snatched at the boy’s arms, pulling him up and searching for cuts and wounds. The twin swords leaned against the stone wall beside Izak’s swordstaff. Neither had a speck of blood on them. The hilt of Twenty-six’s cutlass poked out from beneath his pillow. It hadn’t been disturbed either.

“I’m killt, me,” Nine whimpered. Tears poured from the boy’s ashen face, and he shook in Izak’s grasp. “Four, I’m killt.”

“Twenty-six, wake up!” Izak snapped. “We have to get Nine to the healers.”

Twenty-six lurched up from his pallet. His gray-green eyes took in the blood, and a moment later, he was out of bed as well, cutlass and swordbreaker in hand. There was a glassy skirling as his foot kicked a wine bottle and knocked it across the floor.

“What happened?” the pirate demanded.

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Nine opened his mouth, but only a squeak came out.

“Did you drop one of the bottles and cut yourself on it?” Izak searched the floor for broken glass, but found three unbroken bottles and most of three corks. One looked as if it had been gnawed out of the bottle neck.

Shakily, the boy croaked, “I dranked too much, me. Like you said, it was too rich. Now I’m bleedin’ fit to die.”

“Wine does not cause spontaneous bleeding.” Twenty-six tossed his weapons onto his bed, then crouched next to Nine. “Is it vomit?”

Izak shook his head. “It’s blood, all of it. Can’t you smell it?”

The pirate inspected the boy and the bloody mattress.

“It is isolated to one place,” Twenty-six said. “It is only on his hands because he touched the blood. Correct, Nine?”

“Is it…” Izak stared at the wet red soaking the crotch of the boy’s pants. He’d heard of raving, jaundiced lushes succumbing while blood poured from every orifice; he’d just never heard of it happening to someone so young. “Are you pissing blood?”

“It hurts!” Nine doubled over, clutching his stomach and weeping. “I don’t want to get dead, me! I want Pretty!”

Goosebumps prickled down Izak’s back. He had heard strong men crying for their mothers in much the same way when death was upon them—when they had the time and could still whimper. The sound never failed to make him sick to his soul.

“For the strong gods’ sake.” Izak dropped to his knees at Nine’s side and patted the runt’s shoulder with one shaking hand. “Twenty-six, go get Healer Prime.”

“No.” The pirate was staring down at the boy, a confused frown on his normally stony face. “Not yet.”

“When? After he’s dead?”

The runt wailed harder at the word.

“Nine.” The pirate’s stern address caught the crying boy’s attention. “Did your twin ever bleed like this?”

“’Course not! We never even drinked wine afore.” A long, snotty sniff. “I woulda got her some, me, if I’da lived. I woulda got her whatever uphill stuff she wanted. All sortsa salk headscarfs, a placement, all the food we coulda ate…”

“Were you and your sister identical?” Twenty-six asked. “Identical means a matched set, like the weapons masters.”

“What does that matter?” Izak demanded.

“Pretty!” Nine sobbed, mashing his face into his hands. “We never shoulda split up, us! Twins ain’t supposed to be apart!”

Twenty-six sat back on his heels. “Nine, you’re not dying.”

“What?” The runt lifted his head, hiccupping softly.

“It was a well-carried deception,” the pirate said. “Better than I would have guessed you could manage. But did no one ever tell you that when you reached womanhood, you would bleed?”

“Womanhood?” Izak felt as if Twenty-six had switched to speaking some unknown language. “What are you talking about?”

“Nine is a woman.”

“No, I ain’t!” The runt scrambled drunkenly to his feet, head clipping Izak painfully on the chin. Nine stumbled, snatched up the closest of his swords and groped for the other, but stopped and grabbed his gut again. Weakly, he fell against the wall. “You pirate scum liar! I’ll cut your throat, me.” He groaned the unconvincing threat.

Twenty-six stood. “If you won’t tell the truth, we will get the healer. He will do an examination. You can’t keep up the deception any longer.”

Rubbing his battered chin, Izak twisted around to better see the pair of them. The concentration of blood in the crotch of Nine’s pants hit him anew.

“The pirate’s right, isn’t he? You’re a girl.”

“Shut your face!” Nine yelled, brandishing his—her—sword.

“Stop shouting,” Twenty-six said sensibly. “You will wake all of Thornfield.”

Izak was too stunned for that sort of practicality. He felt like the ghost cities had opened and downpoured revelation on his head.

“You wouldn’t take off your clothes to change in the hall the first night—or get naked to bathe. You never change clothing while we’re in the room. You don’t take your shirt off when it’s hot during training—or even to sleep.” He threw his hands up at Twenty-six. “We’re the imbeciles for not seeing it sooner. Of course she’s a girl!”

That explained the unusual way Nine had been gaining weight. He wasn’t just getting fat in the chest and backside, she was growing breasts and her hips were widening. That face, too, impish and unsettling on a boy, would actually be quite becoming on a girl, if one could see past the grime.

“Well, don’t you dare touch me, neither of you!” Nine had both blades in hand now, grubby knuckles white around the grips. The tips of the steels wavered in the air, and she blinked hard as if she were trying to clear the intoxicating effects of the wine from her vision. “If’n you try any bad stuff, I’ll slice you into cut bait!”

“Put those down,” Izak said. “No one’s trying to hurt you.”

“They say that, then they do hurt you. Only way out of it’s not getting caught in the first place. I knowed it already, that’s why I was a boy. They take after boys less often, the bad folks.”

Twenty-six scowled. “Perhaps that is the way of dirters, but if a child or woman is harmed on the ocean, their attacker is put to death by keelhauling.”

“It’s not our way, either!” Izak snapped. Then he realized why Nine would say what she’d said. “Plough me. At least it’s not all of our ways. Neither of us is going to hurt you, Nine. Don’t you know us better than that by now?”

The runt slumped against the wall, letting the blade points rest on the floor. She took him at his word, which was exactly the sort of thing Izak imagined a predatory scoundrel would take advantage of.

Twenty-six sat on the edge of his bed. For once, he seemed at a loss.

“Who do we go to first?” he finally asked.

“The healers will know how to deal with…” Izak waved a hand vaguely at the blood. “And Grandmaster will have to be informed.”

“No!” Nine stamped a foot, the sudden movement almost taking the little drunk down. “You ain’t telling tales to nobody!”

“Give me those before you impale yourself.” Izak twisted the swords out of her hands. “They’re going to find out. This isn’t a one-time bloodletting; you’re going to bleed like this on and off for the rest of your life. You need someone who can tell you what to do about it. Not to mention the fact that you’re growing… well, everywhere that makes women look like women. Sooner or later, someone will notice.”

“Won’t nobody notice, ’cuz you’re gonna help me stop ’em noticing, the both of you.” She pointed her blades at them as if there could be any confusion who she was referring to.

“No.”

“Absolutely not.”

“But we’re brothers, us. You both said it was so! That means you gotta help me, just like you helped me whup Master Saint Daven and win that wager. Just like I helped you when you didn’t want your face dunked in no more pig swill by the seniors.”

Izak snorted. “How can you be just as stupid as a girl as you were when you were a boy?”

“Fooled you, stupid!”

“Why do you want to become a Thorn so badly?” Twenty-six asked.

She looked at him like he was the simpleton. “’Cuz they get gold and swords and placement.”

“And early graves and magical shackles and brutal deaths,” Izak added.

“Who’s caring about that? A Thorn can get Pretty outta the Closes. The Cormorant told me I had to be smart to protect us, so that’s what I done. I never meant to get here, but when it come to it, I was smart enough to figure this was even better for us.”

“If the Closes are as dangerous as you say, and you were her only defense,” Twenty-six said, “then you must know that your sister is likely already dead.”

A split second of silence followed the pirate’s blunt statement, in which Izak could hear the splatter of the rain on the wet sand outside.

Then Nine charged Twenty-six, a whirlwind of fury.