The new crop of Thorns arrived on the tail end of an unseasonably hot spring. The weather on Thornfield’s spit of sand had swung from constant rain to drought well ahead of summer, so there was no precipitation on enrollment night. The incoming first-years stood where Izak, Twenty-six, and Nine had stood soaked through twelve months before, listening to the grandmaster’s speech, uncomfortably dry and hot.

Izak and Twenty-six were called from training to drag out the baths, while Nine and a handful of now second-years hauled water from the wellhouse.

“It’s enough to make a man jealous.” After they placed the second basin, Izak stripped off his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. “Cold bath on a night like this.”

Twenty-six assessed the new arrivals. “There are half as many as were enrolled last year.”

“The number of men born with blood magic has been waning for years.” Izak glanced at the group over his shoulder as he and the pirate headed back to the shed to retrieve the next basin. Few and motley, they were, leaning toward the low street and rustic majority. “The royal blood magic tutors said it goes in swings like that. In a few years, it will swing the opposite direction and Thornfield will be beating the new recruits off with a stick.”

“What of the women born with blood magic?” the pirate asked.

Izak stopped in the shed door. “Huh. I never wondered.”

He watched Nine and other former first-years cross their path with buckets of water.

“Obviously they exist,” he said. “Besides the mad queen and a certain runty female-type creature, I’ve never known a woman to use blood magic. What would they do with it?”

“How do you know nothing of your women?” Twenty-six levered the basin out of the far corner of the shed. “Do you never speak with them?”

Izak grunted as they lifted the basin. “Talk isn’t necessary when your touch is Teikru-blessed.”

***

Most of the newly promoted second-years served the new arrivals their first meal with the traditional gleeful abuse, but Twenty-six refused to participate. According to the pirate, the hazing was nothing more than proof of the dirters’ senseless cruelty.

Izak recognized the purpose of the custom, but the worst he could bring himself to do was half-heartedly crumple up the bread he was passing out.

“Nah, you’re s’posed to do like this,” Nine said, before helpfully hocking a wad onto a first-year’s plate.

“You gutter trash!” The first-year whose food had been desecrated was a young man Izak’s height and twice his breadth, with the pudge and disdain of a very successful merchant’s son. “Lick this up and get me another!”

Nine was already on her way to her next victim, leaving her blind side exposed. The angry first-year’s enormous pink paw shot out unseen and caught the runt in the right side of the head.

The surprise clout sent Nine tripping, then onto her knees. She slapped a hand down on the flagstones, then exploded from the floor, screaming like a tornado and barreling at the fat merchant’s son like a battering ram at a gate.

Twenty-six got there first. He snatched the angry first-year by the throat, hauled him over the bench, and slammed the larger man to the floor. The merchant’s son whoofed as all the air in his lungs burst forth.

Nine launched a kick at the head of the gasping first-year as he writhed on the floor, but Twenty-six looped an arm around the runt’s stomach, jerking her back like a dyre on a chain before her boot connected.

“Retribution has already been served,” the pirate told her. “Leave him.”

Izak smiled down at the red-faced first-year.

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“Count yourself lucky the pirate got to you first.” The prince offered the merchant’s son a hand up. After a moment, the first-year accepted, putting the considerable weight of his bulk in Izak’s grip as he winced to his feet. “And take note of Thornfield’s natural order. Twenty-six might not believe in excessive retaliation, but the rest of us do.”

To demonstrate, Izak hooked a foot behind the first-year’s ankle and threw a forearm into his chest. The merchant’s son smacked the floor like a gob of snot that time, limp and bewildered.

Nine cackled. “You hit enemies when they ain’t lookin’, ya fool, not your brothers! The worst your enemies can do is get ya killt.”

***

Not long after the royal grafting, a section of Thornfield’s southern wall close to the gatehouse had caved in during a typhoon. As the barracks housed there were still undergoing repair, several of the first-years were assigned to lodge in the western wall with the newly promoted second-years in the empty beds left by the previous winter’s sicknesses.

Izak and Twenty-six had a bad moment when Master Malice tried to place a first-year with them, wondering how they were going to keep the runt’s secret with a fourth person in their room, but Nine saved them.

“Cain’t fit him, sir. I done broke the empty bunk, me. Hadta rassle off this hungry sea folk with big suckers for feet and dune grass for hair and arms as long as a body. And the stink!”

Before Nine could really warm to the tale, Malice stopped it. Upon verification that the bunk was actually broken, the first-year was dumped off on some annoyed third-years whose room was in better condition.

“Get that repaired before the next enrollment,” the Coffee Island master ordered them. “It may be needed.”

“Think if I busted th’other one down, he’d get off us about it?” Nine asked her brothers when the door closed behind Malice.

“If we’re lucky, there will be even fewer recruits next year,” Izak said.

Twenty-six shook his head. “Those are not plans. Better if we put a strategy in place to forestall the possibility.”

No ideas were forthcoming, though.

***

Twenty-six’s question about women and blood magic had pricked Izak’s curiosity. The next time they went to the pub—which was all but deserted in favor of the early summer fishing runs—he asked Casia and Danasi.

“The same things men use it for, I suppose,” Danasi said. Neither she nor her sister had the blood magic, but they were both willing to speculate. “After all, look at Nine.”

A look at the runt revealed more than blood magic. She could hardly even be called a runt anymore. She’d grown nearly a foot in the last year, stretching out most of the late-gained baby fat into lean muscle. Her most dangerous areas of growth had to be wrangled daily, mashed down into a flat chest using a girdle forgotten in Danasi’s room by a vain—and very drunk—aging coastal lord.

In addition to the inconvenient physical blossoming, Nine was becoming quite the swordsman. Swordswoman, rather. With blood magic, she was by far the fastest in their year, and what she lacked in strength she made up for with that wild unpredictability.

“Yeah, lookit,” Nine agreed, draining another cup of ale. “I done whupped ten a’ the seniors all on my own, and that without my swords.”

Still a liar, too. Izak could only assume she was talking about the nights they were pitted against the upper classes for two-on-one training. One of those nights, she’d had a sword knocked away by a fourth-year, which may have formed the basis of her tale. Or she could be making up an entirely new lie. Hard to say.

“Whupped the old crow, too,” she claimed proudly. “Thumped him so bad, he’s still a-healin’.”

“The weapons masters were called away,” Twenty-six said. They had all been in the bailey when Fright had explained that he was taking over the nightly training for the foreseeable future. “That is why you were excused from your lessons. Not because of anything you did.”

Nine slammed the flat of her hand on the timeworn timbers. “I whupped Saint Daven afore he could go running off! Hooked him right acrost the chin, and cut him deep!” She brandished her knuckles as if the basket hilt was still covering them. “See if he crawks at me for not watching the other hand anymore.”

***

“Striker’s,” Chalion said, passing the cloth-wrapped thornknife reverently to Grandmaster.

Grandmaster Heartless pressed the wooden blade between his gnarled hands. A bare few months had passed since Striker’s grafting.

“I don’t suppose there’s an appropriately heroic ending to his tale that Master Risk can put in the Archives?”

Disgust colored the Royal Thorn’s face. “Tell him to put down that Striker died serving Her Majesty.”

In other words, “killed to satisfy the queen’s appetite for flesh and blood and death.” The majority of Jadarah’s Thorns shared the same epitaph.

The last grafting had stolen six of the senior class before they began their final year, leaving them with less than forty. Three of those had already been assigned to lesser nobles across the kingdom, and likely, more private early graftings were on the way. The second- and third-years had been severely cut down by the previous winter’s ailments, and now a new crop had arrived containing only a score and eight students.

Unlike the prince and his tutors, Grandmaster Heartless didn’t subscribe to the notion that the number born with the blood magic swelled and ebbed in cycles. He had studied at Thornfield as a young man, and he’d taught at it as an old man. He had seen corners of the Kingdom of Night and parts of the world most Children of Khinet would never see.

It seemed obvious to Heartless that the blood magic was waning. With the way His Majesty was throwing away the lives of the young men who had it, there was a high likelihood that it would soon disappear altogether.