A month passed before Lord Kariot the Elder cornered Clarencio. The Hall of Law had just let out its final summer session. The royal household would be heading south to Siu Carinal soon, which meant the court must scramble to follow.

“Mattius, old man!” Kariot slung an arm around his shoulder as if they were bosom friends and slowed to match Clarencio’s progress through the corridor. “Well-argued piece about retaining security in our holdings by keeping our fighting men at home. Nasty power-grab, that motion to send standing armies to the northern front, nasty.”

“I admit I was surprised to hear you had shifted your stance on the issue.” Clarencio shrugged off the sweaty, pigeon-breasted lord and gave him a stiff smile. “My apologies, but my own weight is enough to hold up today.”

“Of course, concessions to the malady, of course.” Kariot dabbed at his jowls with a silk handkerchief. The Siu Patanal Hall of Law was old construction, one of the first stone buildings in the city, a former fortress of cut stone, nearly windowless except for a handful of archer loops at vantage points. The place held heat like an oven.

“As for the motion, we both know it’s just passing gas.” Kariot shook out the kerchief before tucking it away again. “I’m sure you’re getting what you can out of its continued presence. Myself, I’m leveraging the nonsense until Orkitria agrees to be more reasonable about caravans passing through his puny little holding.”

“I can’t imagine why he doesn’t want unenthralled bloodslaves dragged through Siu Ferel.”

Kariot shook his head. “The brainless turkey can’t see the benefit of having first pick of the litter. and at pre-sacramental prices, too.”

The Lord of House Orkitria was trying with all his might to brand his single large city as the Shining Star of the East. Towering ivory-washed buildings, shimmering fountains, terraced gardens. Any bloodslaves in Siu Ferel should be scenery, a silent part of the grandeur, not desperately trying to escape or begging passersby to kill them and their children before they were enslaved.

Of course, if the motion held off much longer, Siu Ferel might just be overrun by Helat. In the short time Clarencio had managed to stall sending the standing armies, the king’s army had been routed twice, each time falling back farther. Thus Orkitria’s eagerness to see reinforcements between himself and the Children of Day. Hard to convince the royal household to spend a summer in your lovely city when it was occupied by the enemy.

House Mattius’s loyalty had been called into question multiple times since report of the first retreat had come in, but so far only in the fashion of political posturing. The suggestion had yet to gain any momentum given the number of lords who still balked at the idea of signing over all their sworn fighting men to the crown.

“But the motion’s neither here nor there,” Kariot went on. “I wanted to speak to you about my son.”

“Ah.” Clarencio schooled his features into blankness.

“You know how these young men are, all piss and vinegar, getting liquored up and looking for any scrap they can fall into. I daresay you were the same in your youth. I certainly was.”

Clarencio replied with a noncommittal grunt.

“In any case, let it be known that I don’t condone a bit of it. The lad’s been sent home to rusticate until the new year as punishment.” Kariot chuckled. “And don’t think that wasn’t a tussle! Thought his yelling and crashing about would wake the bloodslaves. But there’s still only one lord of House Kariot. Yes, and he rules with an iron fist.”

“It was well-handled, I’m sure.”

“Just wanted you to know he wouldn’t be troubling you again.”

“Oh, he was no trouble at all,” Clarencio said. The boy had practically thrown himself down the stairs.

“Drunk, too, him and his friends. So drunk he could have made up any night-forsaken story.”

“Of course. Liquor is well known for improving one’s deceptive abilities.”

Kariot turned a little red around the jowls. “For him it does. Bloody little liar. Never know what he’s going to say. Told his mother once I was going to have her assassinated. Of all the nonsense!”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

A pair of bloodslaves pulled open the towering entry doors, revealing the shrinking shadows of early morning. The outside air was mercifully cool, but by midday, the sun would once again bake the city. Autumn crept closer and closer.

“Consider the incident forgotten, Kariot, old man.” Clarencio stopped in the street and clapped the red-faced lord on the back. “Boys will be boys, after all. It’s up to us to settle things like noblemen.”

Kariot’s beaming grin returned. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Now about that iron price you’ve been driving up…”

***

The tradition of first-year hazing carried on as always. Where most second-, third-, and fourth-years usually waited until it was convenient to go on the attack—say, when a first-year stumbled across their path—Lathe went out of her way to pester them.

Specifically, the fat merchant’s son, Thirty. Appearing suddenly out of nowhere, slapping him between the doughy shoulder blades with all her might, then disappearing again was the runt’s favorite pastime.

This was no one-sided feud, however. Once while the first-years were serving the midday meal, Thirty accidentally dashed Lathe across the back of the head with the metal platter hard enough to bend the platter and lay open a gash on her scalp.

Lathe had to be dragged off Thirty by Izak and a senior. The much larger Thirty had to be helped to the healer’s shed.

Bands of first-years began lying in wait for Lathe, though the bands were never made up of the same members twice. One scrap with the bloodthirsty berserker was more than enough to put anyone off the merchant’s son’s gold.

Gold seemed to be the only way Thirty could get loyalty.

“He doesn’t understand how gauche it looks to keep throwing it around,” Fifty-one said, helpfully stating what Izak and every other student of noble blood had already noticed. Though this time the bastard of West Crag could claim to have more insight into Thirty than the rest of the students, as Thirty and another first-year had been pawned off on Fifty-one and Eighty-eight as roommates.

Twenty-six was the only man Thirty seemed to fear. For weeks, the merchant’s son told anyone who would listen that he kept his distance because, “Pirates are louse-ridden, disgusting vermin that spread disease. My father bought an order of bloodslaves from them once, and every single slave had the crotch rot.”

When he heard, Twenty-six confronted Thirty.

“Ocean Rovers do not trade with blood drinkers, nor do we capture or transport slaves. We are not dirters. We give our enemies swift, merciful death in battle.”

It was calmly and reasonably stated. It just happened to be stated while the pirate was thumbing the serrated blade of his swordbreaker and eyeing the first-year’s fat throat.

Thirty stopped spreading rumors about pirates after that.

***

No truly stunning fighters had developed among the first-years by the time Thornfield’s autumn mock tournament arrived, but Izak enjoyed having a few days to laze about watching their bracket before his own began.

The prince was getting accustomed to how currency worked, so he put gold on most of the fights. He won some and lost some. Fifty-one was close enough to a peasant that he’d been raised handling money; he explained that Izak’s losses and wins more or less canceled one another out. But Izak had fun, and as far as he was concerned, that was the point of gold in the first place.

Lathe tried to wager on herself to win the second-year bracket, but the student bookmaker, a third-year who had recently taken the name Ondreus, refused to let the runt bet because the wager matched exactly the amount of money that had been stolen from his stash the night before.

Twenty-six refused to gamble on the tournament.

“Let me guess,” Izak said. “Betting goes against the laws of pirate honor?”

“No. It is a waste of resources.” Dirter money was a waste of resources in itself, considering how often the coins he saw were faked or shaved down, but if he’d had any money, Twenty-six would have stowed it away on the off chance that it might be required to bring him closer to killing the king.

“Entertainment is never a waste of resources,” Izak said.

***

Mock tournaments had always been the most anticipated events at Thornfield, but since the start of their rivalry, the matches between Four and Twenty-six had become the highlight of the holiday. It was a foregone conclusion that the prince would win; the question was how close the pirate would come to beating him.

That autumn, Twenty-six outlasted another eruption of thorns and a gale of knives only to lose the championship to a blistering whirlwind of fire. Having half the flesh on his body burnt black didn’t stop him; he passed out from the lack of air.

“Didn’t have many fires on the open ocean, huh?” Four asked the next day when Twenty-six had recovered enough to talk.

“Ocean Rovers are wise enough to take care with flames,” he said, inspecting his hands and arms. They had taken the worst of the damage in Four’s failed attempt to get him to drop his cutlass and swordbreaker. Twenty-six had blacked out with the weapons still clutched in his melting fingers.

Already the seared layers were peeling away to reveal healthy flesh beneath. He had put no conscious effort into repairing the burns; his body was healing itself.

Four noticed. “You should learn to use blood magic offensively. You’ve got the ability, and your body clearly knows what to do.”

Twenty-six stared down at the newly grown skin. The sun had faded from him over the past year and a half. He was still naturally darker than the rest of the dirters at Thornfield, but stand him up next to any Ocean Rover on the sea and it would be obvious who spent their time skulking in the shadows.

How much evil did he have to embrace? How much more of an abomination did he have to become?

He closed his fist and watched the veins and muscles shift beneath the skin, thinking of the name he would take when he was grafted. The color darker than any other, poised over the depths of the deepest chasm. The man who could redeem the blood debt from the dirter king.

“Show me,” he told Four.