As Clarencio’s contracted year of following court had yet to lapse, he sent his secretary to Blazing Prairie in his stead to meet with his holdings’ city and village elders about mustering protective forces. He had a suspicion that if one were to survey the marauders, one would find about half of them were deserters from the king’s army and another good portion were horse nomads who’d escaped from House Agata’s holdings.

  He had given his representative the power to offer a lord’s pardon to any fugitive who agreed to serve House Mattius and enforce the law across his counties, escaped nomads included. To avoid bestowing another gift of fighting men on the crown, the new conscripts would be answerable to the city gaolers rather than swearing fealty to Clarencio directly.

  That left Clarencio in Siu Rial to complete his reply to the Helat.

  The missive had contained two letters, one written in the formal and rarely used Old Khinesian. The other, Clarencio confirmed through painstaking translation, was a copy written in the Helat’s language.

  It was an ingenious concession to his ignorance of their tongue. There were no books or records of their language in the kingdom and no one who knew how to speak it, but they had sent him a primer to become literate in it.

  It may also have been a test of sincerity. We’ve learned your tongue; will you Children of Night back your peace-seeking claims by learning ours?

  The lord applied himself to the task with the same single-minded dedication he gave to every endeavor. In two weeks, he knew as much of the Helat’s language and script as the missive allowed. In a month, he had a completed reply in Khinesian and was nearly finished translating it into Helat.

  The Helat official—which the Children of Day had translated as “khalif” in the Old Khinesian—had assured Clarencio that a messenger would find him as long as he had the missive in his possession. What it didn’t say was how the messenger would know when Clarencio’s reply was ready.

  Perhaps the Helat had some unknown scrying method. Whatever it was, the day Clarencio sealed the return message, a stranger arrived.

  Ever since the attack, the House Mattius servants had been jumping at shadows. The lack of evidence at who might have sent the assassin had only made them more wary.

  The servants were so alarmed by the unexpected visitor seeking a one-on-one audience that Jarik had to be ordered twice to show him in. The old steward wanted to bring in coachmen to stand guard, but Clarencio assured him that he could take care of himself.

  When Jarik finally brought the hooded and cloaked visitor into the study, Clarencio second-guessed his decision to meet with the stranger alone.

  Clarencio was no small man. Before his laming injury, he’d stood a head above most of his fellow lords. Even now, he could look the towering King Hazerial in the eyes without raising his head.

  The messenger was a good six inches taller than him. Lean and athletic, with golden-brown skin and long orange-red hair such as Clarencio had never seen before. He showed no ill effects from travel; he looked clean and well rested. There was no mud or dirt on his hem. Maybe he had followed Saint Daven back from the Kingdom of Day, found a place to hole up, and waited for the reply to be finished.

  His garments were plain, but in a way that seemed tailored to the task and to the man. Whatever his salary for carrying missives into enemy territory, it was clearly more than the former Thorn had been paid.

  “Salutations,” Clarencio said in Helat, bowing.

  The messenger gave an acknowledging dip of the head, graceful as a monarch.

  “Greetings,” the messenger replied in accented Khinesian. The word was clear, with a slight roll of the r. Clarencio made a note of the sound for his own attempts at speaking Helat. “Your communication is concluded?”

  “It is ready.” Clarencio’s walking stick tapped the stone floor as he limped to the writing desk and retrieved the missive. Something about the messenger’s looming yet quiet presence made the stillness heavier, more somber, and each click almost irreverent by contrast.

  When the man reached out to take the missive, his sleeve fell back, revealing silverwork twined around his hand in a fingerless glove of precious metal netting.

  If this was how their lowly messengers dressed, it was no wonder it took them so long to believe Saint Daven’s story. The former Thorn must have looked a beggar next to their own couriers.

  Of course, if Clarencio had been sending a man to pick up a message from a two-thousand-year enemy, he might also have made sure that man had all the glory of the crown with which to strike wonder and awe into their foe.

  “From this day,” the Helat said, “all communications are carried by Helat-born. Do not send Khinet-born.”

  “That’s acceptable,” Clarencio said. He had agreed to as much in the missive, but he could appreciate wanting confirmation. “However, I do not always live here.”

  A slight twinge of confusion crossed the messenger’s face. Clarencio racked his brain for Helat words that might get his point across, but found none.

  “This isn’t my only residence,” he tried. “Our court moves throughout the year, and I move from place to place with it.”

  Finally, recognition. “The prior communication. Retain this. You will be located.”

  So there was more to the Helat’s tricks than shadowing messengers and keeping watch over the house where the missive ended its journey. The parchment or seal must have been somehow bespelled.

  “Consider it done,” Clarencio said. Seeing confusion once more, he switched to his rudimentary Helat. “It is agreed to.”

  The messenger nodded and turned to leave.

  “Before you go, would you care for some coffee or a meal?” None of these words had come up in the missive, so Clarencio couldn’t ask in the man’s own tongue.

  But the man didn’t seem interested in finding out what had been said. He glanced back, then strode down the dark hall and around the corner. A moment later came the closing thud of the door to the courtyard.

  There were no windows or archer loops in the study, and Clarencio couldn’t get to the front of the residence fast enough to see how the man made his way through the busy Siu Rial streets. Would he use some sort of blood magic to hide himself? Would he leave it to the cloak and hood to disguise his native origins?

  Jarik came in just in time to hear Clarencio curse under his breath.

  “My lord? Is everything well?”

  “Hm? Yes, everything’s fine.” Clarencio’s lips twisted with the ghost of a smirk. He’d only just then realized that he should have asked to take down his hood to verify that he was who he said he was.

  It would have provided confirmation, but also, he was genuinely curious whether the Helat’s ears were pointed like the stories claimed.

  ***

  Izak leaned his elbows on the public house table. “How are we going to keep a new first-year from being assigned to lodge with us?”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  It was a week before the enrollment of the new crop. Their third year at Thornfield was about to begin, and as far as they’d made it without discovery, Izak didn’t want to rely on an unknown personality to keep secret the fact that they had been harboring a dirty, smelly little girl for the last two years.

  Under normal circumstances, he would have sprung this discussion on his friends sometime other than during their precious few hours at the pub. But after the spring grafting, they had begun third-year patrols, and the three of them were never assigned the same watch. Horsemanship lessons had been crammed in between, another alteration to third-year life. Their daylight hours were as busy as their nights now, and they rarely had more than a few minutes in passing each day to conspire.

  Only a fluke of scheduling had allowed the three of them to escape to the pub that day, which to Izak’s consternation happened to come along with a late-season cold snap. The place was packed with locals, and both Danasi and Casia were already occupied upstairs. There was nothing to do except drink and worry about the approaching enrollment.

  “The repairs on the barracks in the southern wall are complete,” Twenty-six said, hooking his sandy hair behind his ear. “They will place the new arrivals there.”

  Where Izak kept his hair cropped fashionably short with the assistance of Seventy-three, a barber’s son in their year, the pirate had yet to cut his hair once. It hung, straight and fine, to his shoulders when he didn’t have it tied back, and Izak had begun joking that if anyone were suspected of being a girl in hiding, it would be Twenty-six.

  “Not likely. I overheard Fright and Malice yesternight saying they’re moving the masters into the rebuilt rooms—” Izak used a drop of spilt ale to outline movement from one location to a new one, then hooked back around and tapped the starting drop. “—so they can carry out renovations on the tower before it falls in or catches fire.”

  Lathe surfaced between gulps of ale. “We ain’t never fixed the bunk, us. Cain’t nobody new fit.”

  “I have my doubts that will work two years in a row,” Izak said. “Especially as we were ordered to repair it before this enrollment.” He gestured to the pirate. “Frankly, I’m surprised that you didn’t fix that bunk immediately, with your fondness for keeping things in good condition.”

  “I do not take orders from dirters.”

  The public house door banged open on an icy spring gust. Three familiar figures darkened the door, one of them sweaty and bright pink from the sun.

  Fifty-one, Eighty-eight, and the heavyset Thirty stood there a moment, looking around awkwardly.

  “Four?” The bastard of West Crag blinked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Me? What are you doing here?”

  “Who cares?” Thirty’s beady eyes roved across the common room. “We see enough of their ugly faces every day. Where are the whores?”

  As if summoned, Danasi appeared on the stairs, escorting her latest visitor down.

  “Praise the strong gods!” Thirty pushed between the bastard and the big rustic, and rushed to her side like a man dying of thirst spying a puddle in the desert. “My dear beauteous beauty, I’m here to engage your services immediately. This is urgent. I’m Teikru-blessed, you see—”

  “Hold on a light-burnt minute, fatso.” Izak jumped up and shoved his way to the staircase. “Danasi isn’t here to cater to every rooting boar who blunders in—”

  “Go plough yourself!” Thirty snapped. Gently, he took Danasi’s elbow and led the amused public house girl up the steps. “I’ve got more gold than all these peasants combined, and I really am blessed by the god-goddess. You’ll be begging to pay me by the time this is over.”

  Izak followed as far as the first riser. “But I’m a loyal repeat customer! And you’ve never had any complaints, neither you nor your sister!”

  “First come, first served,” Danasi said. “I’m sure Casia will be down soon to smooth your feathers, my ruffled cockerel.”

  “I’ll never spend another piece of gold in this place!”

  Danasi smiled at him over her shoulder. It was an empty threat, and they both knew it. He’d thrown the same tantrum when the winter rush kept him waiting.

  Cursing, Izak flipped over an empty chair—much to the annoyance of the locals at that table—then strode back to his friends.

  “I can’t believe this.” He dropped into his chair. “‘Beauteous beauty?’ That windbag. And what was that nonsense about being Teikru-blessed?”

  “It is the same excuse you make for yourself,” Twenty-six said. He finished his drink and stood. “We should leave.”

  “I’m not moving a night-forsaken inch. I’ll never custom that gold-grabbing traitor again. From now on, Casia gets every coin I have.”

  Fifty-one and the hulking rustic Eighty-eight pulled chairs over to their table. Their other first-year roommate had succumbed that winter to a grippe that Thirty had unfortunately survived.

  “So, did you bribe the patrols, too?” Fifty-one asked, leaning his elbows on the table.

  Izak was dumbfounded. With all he’d learned about currency over the past two years, he hadn’t once considered bribery.

  Before he could reply, however, Twenty-six warned, “Do not answer.”

  “Shut up, pirate,” the bastard said. “No one asked you.”

  “You don’t dare tell our pirate scum to shut up!” Lathe leapt across the table.

  Fifty-one was usually a fair hand at grappling, but the attack took him—and everyone else at the table—completely by surprise. When Twenty-six and Eighty-eight finally wrestled Lathe off the bastard of West Crag, his nose was smashed flat and blood poured down his recently acquired wispy mustache.

  Twenty-six tossed the kicking and clawing Lathe over his shoulder.

  “Leave him,” the pirate told her. He jerked his head at Izak. “We must go. Bribes do not buy loyalty, and six bodies sneaking in and out of the walls will be much easier to catch than three. They will be found out.”

  Eighty-eight scoffed. “With what Thirty paid ’em, there’s no way they’ll snitch on us.”

  The public house door whooshed open again, admitting a chilly blast of spring afternoon, but this time the man in the portal caught the heavy timbers before they could crash against the wall.

  Izak couldn’t see who it was around Twenty-six, but he heard Lathe’s gasp.

  Then he, Twenty-six, and the runt disappeared, hidden by her lightning-fast application of blood magic. Not even a shadow of their presence remained.

  The man at the door was one of the gold-eyed weapons masters, dirty, haggard, and hunched from a long time in the saddle.

  “Welcome, master,” the publican said, wandering over to whichever of the Saints it was. “What can we do for Thornfield today?”

  Izak felt someone grab his arm and pull. The chair shifted beneath his invisible weight. Twenty-six was trying to get him out of there.

  “A cup of…” The master fell silent as his gold eyes lit on Izak’s table.

  Izak’s heart stopped in his chest. They were caught.

  “Fifty-one?” The master raised a dark brow. “Eighty-eight?”

  Holding in the sudden urge to cackle with relief, Izak slipped out of his seat and crept to the alley door. Behind him, repercussions churned to life for the rustic and the bastard.

  The invisible trio waited for a pub patron to open the alley door, then slipped out behind the wobbling customer and left him draining his ale against the side of the building.

  Unseen, the trio rounded the corner and sprinted for the edge of the village.

  Izak cursed. “They’re going to implicate us, and our blasted pirate won’t lie because of his stupid honor!”

  “I won’t lie,” Twenty-six agreed, keeping pace with him, “but if the masters find us asleep in our bunks when the others return, I may not have to. The lie will be told for us.”

  “I’ll lie for all of us, me!” Lathe snapped, her voice coming from considerably farther ahead. “Get the rocks outta your boots and run!”

  ***

  The three of them were rousted out of an ostensibly sound sleep half an hour later and asked whether they had been out that day.

  “I been out since after scullerin’, me,” Lathe said helpfully. “That’s a hard job. Plumb snored my head off the second I laid down. I did have me a nasty dream about midday wheres I was drowning in hot water, but it’s all right ’cuz I woke up afore I pissed the bed and used the chamber pot.”

  Izak held up a hand to stop the runt. “Master Malice doesn’t want to hear about your bladder, idiot, and unless I’m much mistaken, he wasn’t asking whether you had a sound sleep.” He turned to the master. “You wanted to know if we were out of our beds after curfew, didn’t you, sir?”

  “I ain’t a idiot!”

  The ensuing fight and the subsequent knocked-over chamber pot proved to be enough distraction to keep them from having to answer any other questions about the village. Before departing, however, Master Malice noticed that they still hadn’t fixed the bunk he’d ordered them to repair.

  “If that’s not useable by the enrollment next week, you’ll all be sleeping on the floor while new students sleep in your beds. Every bunk is going to be needed.”

  “Yes, sir.” They kept their curses to themselves until the Coffee Island master was well out of earshot.

  ***

  Fifty-one, Eighty-eight, and Thirty were scourged in the bailey as the sun went down.

  The trio hadn’t prepared their stories ahead of time. None of their details matched, and when asked to repeat them, new inconsistencies kept appearing.

  Fifty-one and Eighty-eight hadn’t wanted to implicate the prince, so they left Four out of their story altogether. On top of this, the bastard’s disgust for pirates colored his tale so much that it sounded like an invention to pin everything on Twenty-six. Thirty identified Four as the principal offender, but apparently, the Teikru-blessed merchant’s son hadn’t seen anyone but the prince in his quest for whores; he only had vague guesses as to who might have accompanied him.

  Izak spent the next few days showing his two loyal subjects as much favor as he could without attracting suspicion from the masters. He even healed their scourge marks. Rather than resentment, Fifty-one and Eighty-eight viewed the scars as war wounds taken for their prince.

  No one thought to ask the pirate what really happened.

  “We made it past a reef only to sail into a ship’s graveyard,” Twenty-six muttered. “Malice is going to place a new student in our room.”

  “Might be I could fool him, the new boy,” Lathe said.

  Izak raised a dubious brow. “Until you’re grafted? That’s two years. You couldn’t even fool us for one full year.”

  “’Cuz I didn’t know no better! Now I’m plenty learnt. I got all kinda tricks, me.”