Winter had reached its full brutality much ter at Thorhan Izak was used to, and it also tripped int much earlier. The winds blew warmer if not softer, the rains poured with less resolve, and the waves stopped battering the bea favor of a temperate crashing he could almost ighe students who had survived winter were kicked back out into the bailey fhtly training, and the belowstairs staff spent subsequent hours ing up the soup of sandy mud tracked across Thornfield’s floors, on which the yers of reeds had annoyingly little effect.

  “Mud season,” Izak said, scraping a stubborn clod from his boot with the butt of his swordstaff. “How delightful.”

  “It’s fixin’ to be flood season on the river,” Nine said wistfully from her bunk. “It’ll wash away all the trash done built up in the Closes, the water. Couple close-rats, too, if’n they don’t have o get up high. Pretty’s partial to flood season, though. Guess I figure why. That ol’ river s the pce up so much it like to make a whole new Close outta it.”

  Twenty-six watched the o through the archer loop. “It is the end of storm season on the seas. Raiding season will begin soon.”

  Nine hadn’t been paying attention to the reports the pirate brought back from the vilge of the war between the O Rovers and the Kingdom of Night, but Izak had. He paid special attention to anything that might rete to the new prince joining the battles. Etian was Josean-blessed, after all. He wouldn’t be able to stay away for long.

  Izak raised an eyebrow at his friend. “And what your people have been doing all wio our ships and ports, that didn’t t as raiding?”

  “That was oribe, perhaps two, who must have been ied and uo y at rest with the others,” Twenty-six said.

  He left it there, but Izak didn’t he implications spelled out for him. One or two dying bands of pirates had been causing enough trouble to create an uproar along the coasts. What could the trated efforts of a whole pirate nation do?

  ***

  The approag spring mock tour brought with it the excitement of the uping grafting. Every year just before the Festival of Springlight, the king came to observe the fourth-year matches and pick the Royal Thorns from among the best of the seniors.

  And this year, rumor had it, His Majesty was bringing the queen with him, who required a new batch of guards herself.

  Fervor spread throughout Thornfield like a te-spring tagion. Not only had most of the students not seen a woman siheir enrollment, but Jadarah’s beauty and appetites were legendary. A geous, young, insatiable queen with Teikru’s blessing? If there osting almost as enviable as Royal Thorn, it was as one of the queen’s Thorns.

  “Ignoramuses,” Izak muttered to Fifty-one during their legal sces lecture. “You’ve seen Jadarah, she’s foul. You’d have to be horny out of your mind to touch her. Ahorns end up in pieces, scattered across half the royal residences between here and Siu Rial. The king may gh Thorns fast, but she’s just wasteful.”

  “Sure, but what a way to be wasted,” Fifty-one replied. Even the Bastard of West Crag had caught the tagion, it seemed.

  Twenty-six wouldn’t listen to Izak’s disgusted ranting about the queen at all. He was only ied in how close he might get to the king.

  “Don’t ce it,” Izak warned him. “Even fetting the fact that he’ll be surrounded by full Thorns and he make a bloody pulp of you from magic alohere’s still your Mark. He sense you no matter where you are.”

  “There must be a way.”

  “There isn’t, but you’re wele to kill yourself looking for one.”

  Nine was getting more excited by the day, though not because of the royalty ing to visit or the approag holiday from the lectures she could barely sit still through.

  “If I win the first-year bracket, I get to stop them extra sword lessons cold!” She was too carried away with the fantasy to notice the dubious looks passiween Izak and Twenty-six. “First I’m gonna win, then I’m gonna spit in that old crow Saint Daven’s fad tell him to swill river water.”

  ***

  The first-years’ overall level of skill had increased enough sihe autumn touro make their spring bracket worth the watg. Fifty-one fell in an early upset to the longsword-wielding rustic Eighty-eight, whose dexterity was finally starting to catch up to his strength and stamina. The rustic made it two more rounds before he ran up against Nine and had his ndslide of victories stopped by the tiny, disorienting terror.

  Meanwhile, Twenty-six and Four sliced their way through the opposite side of the bracket. Their iable match was the most looked forward to pairing of the first-years, both among the uppercssmen and the staff.

  Although his oppos had been sharpened by a year’s training, Twenty-six’s relentless pursuit of perfe kept him well ahead of the pack. Izak, oher hand, had made just enough improvement to look petent with a swordstaff—and only on the off-ce that actually he had to use it.

  Twenty-six was getting good at throwing off the blood magic illusions. Annoyingly good. So good that he might actually think he had a ce at surviving an atta Hazerial.

  That was frustrating, because Izak had hoped he could pretend to have his backside hao him and ze around for the remainder of this tour. Now it looked more likely that he was going to have to cut the pirate’s legs out from under him just to prove a point.

  They faced off in the round before what would have been the championship match of a real tour. They took their pces at the ter of the bailey, surrounded by shouting onlookers, Master Fright between them, his embroidered handkerchief fluttering.

  “Both parties ready?”

  Twenty-six raised his heavy cutss and swordbreaker.

  Izak readied his staff and grinned in spite of the shiver that ran down his spihere was something truly terrifying about standing on this end of the pirate’s bdes, even in this artificial setting. It was his eyes. They became gray-green seas of fury that saw no friend or foe, only dead men.

  Light burn it all. Izak was going to have to win this ooo.

  “Fight!”

  Twenty-six was on Izak before the kerchief had finished snapping out of the way. The cutss bit into the wooden staff, the impact sending a jolt through Izak’s bones.

  He whipped the staff around, f the bde to the side and catg the sneaking swordbreaker, thehrew the first illusion. The cutss hag into Hazerial’s neck while the serrated bde of the swordbreaker carved upward through his guts and plunged into his bck heart. Gore spraying. The look of shod e on the king’s face.

  Twenty-six tore through it without a sed’s hesitation. The air screamed around his cutss. Izak circled, but not as fast as he should have. If not for smoke step, the bde would have caught him on the hip and the swordbreaker would have taken him through the throat.

  Before he resolidified, Izak threw the illusion. A new arrival—a guilty, sweaty dream of a mouthwatering vanner girl with a delicate gold hanging from her navel pierg. She looked vaguely familiar to Izak, but when you’d ploughed half a dozen of the caravan girls at varying stops around the kingdom, they all started to look the same.

  But Twenty-six was waiting for him. Izak barely mao fend off the pirate’s ons. He backpedaled, circled, retreated some more. The heels of his hands throbbed harder with every deflected chop. It felt as if his arms were going to snap off at the shoulder. Twenty-six didn’t give him a moment’s breath to think about going on the offensive.

  “Very good,” Izak panted. “You’ve made a little progress after all. Now do you want to see what real royal blood magi do?”

  The bailey turned bck around them. The ghost city overhead disappeared. A sted out of the formerly clear night sky. A sizzling lightning bolt struck the great thorn tree, and it burst into splinters.

  Twenty-six’s brows twitched down in fusion, but he kept fighting.

  Izak let out a dark chuckle. “Feel that?”

  Pinpricks opened all over Twenty-six, weeping blood. The pirate gritted his teeth and swung the cutss.

  Izak smoke stepped.

  Twenty-six left a trail of blood as he tried to follow. Tiny beedle tips poked through his bleeding skin. He had to feel the full length of the locust throwing out of his bounneling through his flesh toward the night air.

  “Not so fast now, are you?” This time Izak didn’t bother to smoke step. He had plenty of time to simply walk out of the way of the pirate’s swing.

  Twenty-six stumbled. The locust thorns tore through his skin, bristling with barbed sideshoots and dripping blood, shredding muscle with every motion, every twitch. In Izak’s experience, most people were usually howling in anguish by that point. The pirate remained silent.

  But he did drop to his knees. Hatred bzed in his eyes.

  Until threw through those gring orbs. Blood and humors oozed down the pirate’s face like miscolored tears. His skull cracked as the thorns forced their way out through the bone.

  Still no screaming. The courtiers watg the execution would’ve booed and hissed.

  Moving at a leisurely pace, Izak put the bde of his swordstaff to Twenty-six’s throat.

  “Winner: Four!” Fright decred.

  There was a moment of stunned silehen the cheering washed in from around the bailey. The bck cloud and storm disappeared, and the returned ghost city seemed that much brighter by parison. Untouched, the thorny locust tree loomed behind the kneeling, gring Twenty-six.

  No thorns stuck out of the pirate’s body, but the bloody holes were still there. Everywhere but the eyes and brain. Izak had ried to keep a victim alive after that little trid hadn’t wao actally, permaly destroy any funs Twenty-six might need iure.

  Izak offered his friend a hand up.

  “Losses are more informative than wins, right?” he said cheerfully.

  After a moment, Twenty-six nodded, a jerky, uncoordinated movement of ill-treated muscle and joint. He ignored Izak’s outstretched hand and shoved himself onto his shaking legs.

  Then he colpsed in the sandy mud. Because his body had been torn to pieces from the i, whether he wao admit it or not.

  Izak sighed. “You really are oubborn savage.”