Scabs—or Seventeen, as Izak made no effort to remember—fell in with a less than savory crowd soon after his first bribe came in. Thirty, who had taken up running the games of the barracks until he could find another way out to the vilge, was chief among them. Between cards and marbles and ering games, Scabs had lost the full silver by the end of the week.

  He returo the room te oernoon rubbing his jaw and moaning.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Izak marked his spot iy-eight’s test folio with a finger. With Lathe at sword lessons and Twenty-six patrolling the wall, he was the only ohere, and he’d been hoping to have more time to peruse the lewd drawings alone.

  Scabs prodded at his tohen shook his head. “It’s getting mighty slippery, this here tongue. Figure I’m o losing trol over it if’n I don’t get another silver soon.”

  “Another silver!” Izak spped the folio on his bed. “You’re out of your mind if you think I get you more this fast.”

  “You best figure how to.” Scabs pulled himself up onto his bunk above Twenty-six’s. He grinned ao work pig at a crusted over bit of ae on his . “Lot a’ folk e to the games every night, and they’re all talkers, them. You know what they like to talk about most of all?” He stuck the plucked scab in his mouth, then poi the top drawing on the folio. Not the most detailed of Eighty-eight’s work, but clear enough to get Scabs’s meaning across. “That right there.”

  ***

  “You should not have paid him again,” Twenty-six said at lunch the following night. “Now he will expect a silver every week.”

  “I have plenty to spare, aoo stupid to realize it,” Izak said. “We’ll string him along until we e up with a better idea.”

  “We oughta cut open his throat, shove our hand up into his mouth, and hop him around like one a’ them street puppets.” Lathe’s suggestions hadn’t ged much since Scabs’s arrival, just gained in color and severity. “Pretty and me seen somebody do it to a dead dog once. Like to kill us ughin’.”

  “I meant a good idea,” Izak said. “If Thornfield will sce a man fhting with a bde outside of training, they’re not going to be kind to one who murders a fellow student.” He scowled. “I ’t believe I’m missing out on the public house girls because of that scab-eating human pimple.”

  “We could drown him ihhouse,” Twenty-six suggested. “Most dirters ’t swim. It would seem like an act.”

  Izak snorted. “That’s about as believable as Lathe drowning ih.”

  “Hey! I wash up now, me. Just not hereabouts.” While the prind the pirate were trapped in their room pretending for Scabs’s sake that they never snuck out, Lathe was able to slip off, invisible, to the pub uhe cover of her sword lessons and disciplinary duties running te. She’d been doing it more and more tely, avoiding the room altogether some days.

  “You’ll five me if I don’t dance for joy at the thought of you squandering Casia and Danasi’s delights on a chaste bath.” Izak sidered his own words for a moment. “That’s one I o suggest to Eighty-eight for his drawing. He could substitute a busty, longhaired beauty for Lathe…”

  “The pirate scum’s got the hair but not the chest for it,” Lathe said, reag over and giving Twenty-six’s long hair a jerk. He smacked her hand away. “Anyhow, didn’t ya ever know that long hair’s bad medie? Folk just snatch ahold of you and yank you back.”

  Twenty-six raked a hand through his sandy hair, straightening what Lathe had mussed. “If your silver tide Seventeen over until spring, Lathe may be grafted early, like Striker and the other third-years were.”

  “Who in the name of Khi is Seventeen?” Izak asked.

  “Scabs,” Lathe transted.

  Izak raised a brow at Twenty-six. “I thought you said that waiting and hoping weren’t solutions.”

  “Ina is a poor choice, but it may be our only choice for now.”

  “I gave us another one, me.” Lathe used her hand to mimic a mouth opening and closing. “Street puppet him.”

  ***

  Without any booze or women to spend it on, Izak’s money held out easily until the autumn tour. He won a handful more betting on the first-, sed-, and fourth-years.

  Only the most dedicated of gamblers were willing to put money ohird-years. Lathe tore up one side of the bracket, winning every fight like a natural disaster befalling a straw vilge. Izak and Twenty-six chewed through the opposite side, shooting toward the iable showdown in the finals. The bookmakers—student and staff alike—set hardly better than even odds.

  That bore out ich between the pirate and the prince. Izak would only go far enough to almost kill his friend, and Twenty-six refused to be stopped by anything short of death.

  The night screamed with deadly winds, the ghost city overhead flickered from bck to brilliant green, and the huge thorny locust tree bent and groaned as the young men utacks with bde and blood magic. They threw one another across the bailey. Their bdes crashed together in showers of sparks. They attacked each other’s blood, broke each other’s holds, and battered one another physically aally while the students and staff of Thornfield looked on in awe and winced in sympathy.

  Most matches ended in minutes. Intense, but fast. The brutality of Twenty-six and Izak’s match dragged on for over a quarter of an hour, exhausting the fighters and ratcheting the tension of the spectators up to unbearable levels.

  In a st-ditch effort, Izak poured forth fire and id pgue. Twenty-six never faltered. The prince might kill him, but not fast enough. The pirate broke through the final yer of defenses, catg Izak by the throat as thorns burst through Twenty-six’s flesh.

  Unlike previous tours, these thorns were not a creation of the prince’s royal blood magic. This time the pirate had grown them himself.

  The massive spikes speared into Izak, trapping him iy-six’s grasp like a piece of skewered meat. The priried to disperse the thorns and pry the pirate’s hand free of his throat, but Twenty-six blocked Izak’s spell, keeping the wicked brambles solid, prolonging the damage to himself rather than release his oppo.

  Twenty-six rested his swordbreaker beh Izak’s jaw. The prihunderibeat pulsed his vein against the cold steel serrations.

  “Winner,” Fright announced, “Twenty-six!”

  The blood magic disappeared in a gasp, returning the ghost city overhead to normal brightness and the bailey to a roar of cheering and booing at the match’s result.

  No longer supported by his friend’s barbed death grip, Izak dropped to his knees, exhausted, and began healing his perforated throat.

  “Strong gods help us both if I ever have to fight you for real,” he panted.

  Twenty-six offered Izak a hand slick with blood and shaking with fatigue. “If we ever meet in bat, you ot withhold the death blow.”

  ***

  As Lathe had mao avoid the traps and interferences aimed at her by Thirty and his new bosom friend, Scabs, the third-year championship bout came down to her and Twenty-six.

  The pirate scum started out the match by taking her measure, giving a testing jab here and a whack there. After her most ret growth spurt, Twenty-six had lost the height advantage—she now stood an inch taller than her longhaired brother. His shoulders were wider, but carryiwin steels, she could match his reach. She knew he was figuring that his best optioo stay inside her range and use her eye against her.

  But that old aster had brought more back than disappoi in her ck of training during his absence.

  “Being wild as the wind will only help you when you see your oppo,” Saint Daven said their first day back at extra sword lessons. “You’re not going to deflect a crossbow bolt from your blind side by act. You’ve got to make sure you’re covered, even when you ’t see what’s ing.”

  Them blind side defenses worked, too. Each time Twenty-six attacked Lathe’s blind side, she already had one of her twin swords there to meet it, ringing against his heavy cutss. That ugly swordbreaker raced in behind, but Lathe spun and caught the dagger oeel. The serrations bit notches into her sword, but she whirled away from the strike, slipping free before he could snap the bde.

  “Lathe?” Saint Daven had said wheold him the name she’d chosen. “Makes sense. A the spins, and you’re always spinning even though I told you o turn your ba a bde.”

  “I’m faster than a bde, me.”

  “Bdes don’t have to be fast to kill you. They just have to be in the right spot.”

  When faced with Lathe’s whirlwind attack, most oppos backed away. Unfortunately for her, the pirate scum had seen it happen too often to fall into the same trap. He pressed in closer, f her to face him head-on. Her defeterns blocked his blind-side blows, but he kept pushing closer and closer, until she was backed up against the thorn tree.

  And bme it all but it wasn’t because the pirate scum was any faster than she was. It was because he was always where she least wanted him to be. That dumb ol’ crow was right—position was more important than speed.

  Lathe fshed around behind Twenty-six, disappearing and reappearing.

  That was what the pirate scum had been waiting for. The sed she disappeared from in front of him, he hooked his leg backward and caught her behind the ankle, jerking her foot out from under her.

  She hit the ground with her twin swords up, but Twenty-six kicked her right bde out of the air. She let it fly, grabbing a fistful of his long hair instead, and tried to hato his face with her other sword.

  The pirate caught the blow on the swordbreaker and twisted the dagger. Her bde snapped with a high steel ping. With his cutss, he chopped through his hair, taking away Lathe’s handhold. She dropped.

  Before she hit the dirt, the pirate had his cutss to her throat.

  “Wiwenty-six,” Fright yelled, shoving iween them in case the votile berserker decided to retaliate. He shouldn’t have worried.

  “That was a fair good scrap, ya pirate scum!” Lathe grinned up at Twenty-six. “Smart about getting rid of your long hair, too.”

  “You were right,” Twenty-six said. “Long hair is a hindrance. I will cut the rest today.”

  “I’m always right, me.” She popped to her feet and poked at the slightly darker hair that was finally starting to fill in along his jaw. “Face hair’s getting long, too.”

  “No, it isn’t.” He smacked her hand away. “Don’t touch my beard.”