The sun was nearing its apex as the crop of prospective Thorns was assigo board in the westernmost wall of Thornfield’s battlements because it had the highest abundanpty bedchambers. The years were not always so clearly segregated, however. Deaths, fires, and the stant stru required for the upkeep of su old structure frequently saw new arrivals b with senior students, or seniors shifted to junior’s rooms when repairs were required.

  Once assigned, Izak and his bunkmate were left to acquaint themselves with their room. Not a lot of work, that. A door, an archer loop, four shelf beds anchored to the stone walls, two at knee-height, two more he low ceiling. One might call it a cell without being corrected.

  Two seemed a small popution for a room with four bunks, but perhaps this was another nod to royalty. Thornfield had no luxury to give, so let the former prince have extra space.

  The fn probable murderer went to the archer loop and looked out at the sea. Sometime during the te meal, the rain had stopped, leaving behind a ed-surf smell and the harsh gre of sunlight.

  “Noisome, isn’t it?” Izak tossed the roll of bs he’d been issued onto the ugly straw ti the closest lower bunk. “You don’t happen to know how te these so they look usable for sleeping?”

  Instead of answering, the fner ed his o see out the top of the archer loop, as if he expected Thornfield’s meager ghost city to be hanging over their heads in broad daylight.

  “Me either.” Izak unrolled his buhat was starting to lht. It almost reached from the head of the bed to the foot, anyway. “I walked in on a chambermaid doing my bedding once, but we never got around to seeing how that ended.”

  No response.

  Izak crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the top bunk. “Look, if we’re stu here together, we might as well get to know each other. I’m Izakie—uh—Izak, rather. Four, if you like.”

  Silence.

  “Do you evehis nguage?” Izak asked. “I know a few others. Coffee-anee? Pilekiene k vek?”

  The fner went to the opposite lower bunk and dumped out his bedroll. In a few effit motions, the straw tick was ed in cloth and cover.

  Izak blinked. “Run that by me again.”

  Without a word, the fner climbed into his bed and turned his face to the wall.

  ***

  Well after midday, the door to their room scraped open. Both Izak and the furned over.

  It was the little liar he boy squinted bad forth between the young men.

  “Which a’ you am I supposed to get in with?”

  “You’re not.” Izak poio the bunks closest to the ceiling. “But take your pick of those.”

  “Who’s sleeping in ’em?”

  “You.”

  “And who else?”

  “Just you.”

  Nine goggled. “Ain’t nobody gon up there with me?”

  “It’s all yours. Along with your very own salks and boots.”

  But Izak had misread him. The boy wasn’t impressed, he was dismayed.

  “All out in the open by myself?” He shook his bald-patched head. “Nah, that’s bad medie, sleeping alone. Get on over, let me in.”

  “No.” The fner shoved Nine off his bed.

  “I knew you could uand me!” Izak said.

  The fner scowled. “I do not speak to blood drinkers.”

  “You’re speaking to me now.”

  uro Izak. “Let me in with you.”

  “Absolutely not.” The kid looked just as dirty as he had before the bath, and now he was giving off a powerful smell of onions from the kits. “I doubt that dip earlier was enough to kill your lice.”

  “I ain’t got lice, me!”

  “You’re not sleeping down here. You’re the smallest, that bed’s the smallest. Therefore, you sleep up there.”

  ried to dodge around, as if Izak would ge his mind if he just made it into the bed, but the prince was faster and had longer arms.

  Finally vinced Izak wasn’t going to let him in, Nine cmbered onto the top bunk and flopped down harder than necessary. The bed creaked under his bird bones.

  Izak settled bato his straw tick, tent that he’d won and gd he hadn’t trusted his weight to that rickety piece of driftwood.

  “Anyhow, I piss the bed every day,” the little runt growled, “me and my lice.”

  It was hard to sleep the sleep of the victorious after that. Izak kept waking up certain he heard dripping.

  ***

  The new recruits’ first few days at Thornfield went to evaluation.

  Assessment did not begin with on work, but with quizzing in history, letters, arithmetic, politics, and courtly protocol. Nine wasn’t the only boy among the new crop who couldn’t read, write, or t. Most of the low street rabble were entirely illiterate. Several of the rustics had a basic grasp of mathematics—two winter ricks of hay per ram and three per nursing ewe sheep would keep the flock alive until spring grazing came around again—but they had no cept of things such as debt, i, or accrual.

  “I uand why you require lessons on courtly etiquette, and I admit rudimentary numbers will e in handy, especially if all Thamble as recklessly as the King’s Guard,” Izak said after he’d been deemed Excellent in every field of study, “but why bother teag the rest of it? What Thoro know the subtleties of semanti the legal sces or the angle of decay on an arrow? Tell them to step out of the way of the pointy bit, and that’s the gist, isn’t it?”

  “Many lords eventually e to rely ohorns in more than matters of security.” The Master of Archives, who led the academic assessment, was a bespectacled, bookish-looking old man whose name—Risk—Izak would have taken as a joke if he could find any evidehat the man had a sense of humor. “Who a lord trust with his businesses, personal dispatches, colles, and nds more than a man grafted into loyalty? In many cases, quick-witted Thorns have risen to take over the night-to-night running of their masters’ estates and affairs of trade or industry.”

  Perhaps that was true in the private sector, but Izak had never seen King Hazerial fer with a Thorn on anything but war or defense.

  Twenty-six had a different obje for the Master of Archives. “What you are saying is not history, it is lies. The first Dirter War began because a filthy, blood-drinking tyrant thought he could take O Rover children for bloodsves without reprisal, not because O Rovers sacked coastal vilges unprovoked. O Rovers do not set foot on this filth your people wallow in. All attacks were carried out on svers your dirter ki into Raen waters.”

  Master Risk looked down his hooked Twenty-six. “I stood in the ashes of a vilge destroyed by your people. When they had raped and plundered as much as they wahey locked the women and children into a barn a on fire. When women shoved their babies out the windows to save them, the pirate savages crushed the infants with burning clubs.”

  “Lies!”

  Twenty-six became the first of the new crop to be sced in front of the entire year for disrespeg a master.

  “An hour earlier, and he’d have broken your record,” Risk told Grandmaster Heartless ter.

  Heartless chuckled. “I suspect he’s a bigger threat to your Most Fights in the First Year.”

  “That still stands? Whatever happeo the ferocity of youth?”

  ***

  Martial assessment took the twin ons masters most of two days.

  Where the prince, Four, had breezed through the mental exercises and academic questions, his bdework was average at best. His life of luxury at court had left him slow, soft, and without stamina unless he used blood magic. He handled longsword, fal, and rapier with familiarity, but no outstanding skill. Worst, his fighting cked any sembnce of aggression.

  Master Saint Galen finally goaded the panting prio initiating an attack by swearing that if Izak ran him through, he would be allowed to stop and catch his breath.

  “So you lied to him,” Saint Daven said whewins were discussing it ter.

  Saint Galen shrugged. “It got him to attack. Besides, he couldn’t run a dead fish through.”

  Twenty-six surprised no oh his aggression, and he handled a cutss as if he’d been born to it.

  They had hardly begun to circle when Saint Daven spotted the pirate’s free hand curled around an invisible hilt.

  “What do you usually fight with in your off-hand? Cudgel? Beying pin? Dagger?”

  Twenty-six’s sandy brows jumped, theuro his suspicious scowl. “A swordbreaker.”

  “Been a while sihornfield’s had a good dual wielder. I’ll get Master Smith to dig something up for you to practice with.”

  Later, Saint Daven ferred with his brother. “I o brush up on off-hand wielding. That fn kid’s going to be teag me before long if I don’t stay ahead of him.”

  “Let me have a hack at him.”

  One pirate-fight ter, Saint Galen came to the same clusion. Twenty-six was sure to lead the year in bat, though everyone khat officially it would be reported that the king’s sohe top spot.

  What the delta brat, Nine, cked in experience, was more than made up for in sheer bloodthirsty eagerness. The boy was as wild as a winter wind, joyously hag and sshing without a thought to proteg himself or serving energy.

  “Might have the kingdom’s littlest berserker on our hands,” Saint Daven told Grandmaster Heartless.

  Though the crop of prospective Thorns was smaller than normal, Grandmaster believed it would prove one of the best to e through Thornfield in years. Only oudent had had to be turned away as unteachable—a palsy in the hands couldn’t be corrected or overe—and everyone who stayed had powerful reserves of blood magic.

  The trick, Heartless thought as he watched the assessments, would be teag young men who had relied all their lives on such magic to push through without it. The wrafted Thorn was miles better trained and more skilled than any soldier, merary, or assassin in the Kingdom of Night, but if he ever came up against a Child of Het and thought he could rely on blood magic to save him, he was as good as dead.

  Howdy, friends! Thanks for reading! I hope you're enjoying the story so far!

  Do you have a character you like the most? I find it hard to pick, but maybe that's just bc I'm biased ... in favor of them all, lol.

  See you in tomorrow's chapters!e