In the end, they were lucky Nine was drunk.

She tried to bring the pirate’s cutlass and swordbreaker into the fight, but Twenty-six kicked the cutlass out of her reach and Izak pried the swordbreaker out of her hand. When she went after the pirate with fists instead, Twenty-six caught hold of her hair and held her at arm’s length, as he had on the occasions when Nine had tried to scrap with him as a boy. As usual, that completely nullified her blows, which made Nine berserk. Twenty-six refused to do more than defend himself now that Nine was a girl, so they were all bruised and bleeding by the time Izak finally wrestled her away and got her to calm down.

“She ain’t killt, Pretty!” Nine slurred as tears dripped off her chin. “If’n you’re two really my brothers and not straight betrayers, then that means she’s your sister, too, and you gotta help me protect her. You gotta help me stay a boy, so’s I can be a Thorn. It’s loyalty, is what it is.”

Izak licked at his split lip. She didn’t know the size of what she was asking. Light, he could barely guess at it. There were more than three years left before they were grafted. Someone was bound to find out.

“How do you expect us to keep something like this quiet?” he asked. “Unless Twenty-six knows some way to hide your bleeding all over the place, because I sure as night don’t.”

The runt looked to Twenty-six as if she actually expected him to have an answer.

He stopped poking at the rising bruise on his cheekbone. “Why would I know?”

“Well, you knowed a bunch a’ other stuff,” Nine snapped. She scratched the back of her head, then fixed Izak in her left-eyed stare. Strange how she could have all the same mannerisms and yet look so different now that Izak knew what she was. “Them whores at the pub must know what to do about it. I’ll ask ’em.”

Twenty-six looked at the sheets of rain falling beyond the archer loop. “It’s almost evening. The hall will be filling with breakfasters in less than an hour. Three missing faces will draw attention, especially if they all share the same room.”

“I can make it by myself, easy,” Nine said. “Anyhow, I’m faster’n a stray cat on my own. I’ll get there and back afore training.”

“There’s still some faint daylight,” Izak argued. “The patrols might see your shadow from the wall and raise the alarm.”

Nine scowled. “No, it won’t be like that grumped Master Saint Daven said. They won’t raise no alarm, ’cuz I’ll mirror my shadow all the way under the battlements in with the other shadows. Who’s gonna tell one shadow from the rest of the dark?”

Izak opened his mouth to argue more, then stopped.

“That’s… actually not a bad idea. Maybe you are smarter as a girl.”

Nine spat on him.

***

Squeezing through the grating wasn’t possible any longer, because of the inconveniently growing chest and hips Four had mentioned. With a curse, Nine covered her nose and mouth like she’d seen Four do and plunged under the drainage water. For a panicky moment, her pants caught on the toothlike iron bars at the bottom of the grate, and Nine thought she was going to drown. But then the cloth tore free, and she shot out the other side.

She came up coughing and gasping. Taking a quick peak at the battlements above, she disappeared and took off for the thornknife graveyard. As she ran, she made sure to throw her shadow into the last of the shade cast by the gray, stormy sunset.

Footprints raced across the wet sand at the edge of the waters, then disappeared, dragged away by the tide. Nine had never stored extra clothing in the shrine with Twenty-six’s and Four’s, so she sprinted through the graveyard without stopping. She would grab a blood-free pair of her brothers’ clothes on the way back.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

It was fun running invisible, even with the rain. After so long training every day, Nine had built up enough stamina that she didn’t have to drink off any birds or rats along the way. She was a little out of breath when she made it to the pub, but there was plenty of medicine to steal from the people and livestock sleeping in Sandshell’s little cluster of houses.

The public house girls were counting their take for the day in the common room when Nine burst in.

“Strong gods!” Casia clutched her chest. “You’ll kill a person from fright crashing in like that!”

Danasi was the first to see the blood. She jumped up, knocking over her chair. “Nine, what’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“I’m a girl, me, but I didn’t know I was gonna bleed so, and now I gotta be a boy again before breakfast’s done with, but I can’t stop this bleeding, not even with all the medicine I got, so what do you do about this, both of you, and hurry up!”

It took another rendition, slowing Nine’s retelling down, and asking for lots of clarification, before the women got the full story.

Casia took Nine upstairs to the bath she’d been preparing for herself while Danasi found the necessaries and brought them in. Together, they answered questions and explained what they could. There was some speculation between them whether Nine had blundered into Thornfield on the cusp of womanhood, or if she was overdue and, like they’d heard from their great aunt who had lived through the Plight, her womanly troubles had held off until she’d had enough nourishment to start growing again.

“What was this about a bird telling you to become a boy?” Danasi wanted to know while she scrubbed the girl’s face.

“What bird?” Nine spat out soapy water. “I figured on bein’ a boy, me. The Cormorant saved me and Pretty from some bad folk, whupped every one of fifty of ’em all the way back to their fancy fine carriage. I done in half a dozen of ’em, too. Beat one a’ their bodyguards’ head in so bad his insides were leaking out his skull all over my rock.”

Casia wrinkled her nose. “We don’t need all the bloody details. A cormorant is a bird, isn’t it? A river bird?”

“The Cormorant’s god of the streets in Siu Carinal. He watches after us close-rats whenever he can. Sends us good medicine and that-all. He useta be a close-rat, just like me and Pretty, so he knows there ain’t no strong god carin’ about us. They’re too big, them strong gods, but he’s just right.” Nine smacked a palm down on a curling wake of soap that caught her eye.

“I told you to stop that!” Danasi snatched a linen and wiped water from her face and bodice. She sighed. “You ought to just come live with us. Dad’s got another room, and you can make a fair bit when you’re old enough.”

Nine shook her head. “Ain’t neither of you knows how to cut somebody’s guts out and string him up with ’em. I gotta get dangerous so’s I can protect Pretty.” She snorted. “Ain’t neither one of you even knows how to use medicine!”

“Stand up.” Casia dumped the bucket of rinsewater over Nine’s head, making the girl shriek and splutter. “That’s for thinking we’re weak and stupid. Now get out here and dry off.”

***

The rain had died down by the time early evening training began. Izak and Twenty-six were sparring with two fourth-years going by the names Manly and Striker, when a strange little imp threaded toward them through the fighters in the bailey. Whoever the boy was, his skin was scrubbed raw. His clothes were the familiar Thornfield issued set, rolled up at the sleeves and ankles to accommodate a too-short body, but Izak swore he’d never seen the boy before.

Until the boy turned his head just slightly right to look Izak in the eye and grinned.

“Strong gods save us! You bathed?” Izak got the pirate’s attention. “Nine bathed!”

“That must be why you’re late,” Twenty-six said.

“Come on, pirate,” snapped Striker, the fourth-year he was sparring with. “Get your head back in the fight and make this worth my while.”

Without warning, Twenty-six spun back and kicked the older student’s foot out from beneath him, thumping Striker in the side of the neck with a half-power blow from his cutlass pommel.

Striker hit the dirt, stiff as a plank, then started up, blinking the daze from his eyes.

“What happened?”

“You got what you asked for, numbskull,” his fellow fourth-year, Manly, told him.

At Izak’s appreciative snicker, Manly smirked. Even the older students wanted a prince to laugh at their jokes.

“That’s a good trick!” Nine raised her twin swords. “Show me how to do that, ya pirate scum.”

“Another time,” Twenty-six said.

“How come not now?”

“Because,” Master Saint Galen said, grabbing Nine’s shoulder and hauling her around to face his angry gold glare, “students who come late to my training have to spar with me the rest of the evening.”

Nine’s clean stint was a short one. By midnight, she was covered in a layer of mud, wet sand, sweat, and the stray lash mark. While the older students were dismissed to lunch, the first-years stayed to work through the extra drills Nine’s tardiness had earned them, adding an invisible layer of resentful glares to the filth.

But she hadn’t been caught.

“See how easy it is bein’ a brother?” Nine whispered cheerfully to her roommates several hours later, when they were finally allowed to drag themselves to supper. “Told you wasn’t nobody gonna find out.”