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 chance in the barracks until he could find another way out to the village, was chief among them. Between cards and marbles and other wagering games, Scabs had lost the full silver by the end of the week.

  He returned to the room late one afternoon rubbing his jaw and moaning.

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

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

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

  “You best figure how to.” Scabs pulled himself up onto his bunk above Twenty-six’s. He grinned and set to work picking at a crusted over bit of acne on his chin. “Lot a’ folk come 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 pointed at 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, and he’s too stupid to realize it,” Izak said. “We’ll string him along until we come 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 changed 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 laughin’.”

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

  “We could drown him in the bathhouse,” Twenty-six suggested. “Most dirters can’t swim. It would seem like an accident.”

  Izak snorted. “That’s about as believable as Lathe drowning in the bath.”

  “Hey! I wash up now, me. Just not hereabouts.” While the prince and 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 under the cover of her sword lessons and disciplinary duties running late. She’d been doing it more and more lately, avoiding the room altogether some days.

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t dance for joy at the thought of you squandering Casia and Danasi’s delights on a chaste bath.” Izak considered his own words for a moment. “That’s one I need to suggest to Eighty-eight for his next 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, reaching 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 medicine? 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 can tide Seventeen over until spring, Lathe may be grafted early, like Striker and the other third-years were.”

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

  “Scabs,” Lathe translated.

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

  “Inaction 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 tournament. He won a handful more betting on the first-, second-, and fourth-years.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

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

  That bore out in the match 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 black to brilliant green, and the huge thorny locust tree bent and groaned as the young men launched attacks with blade and blood magic. They threw one another across the bailey. Their blades crashed together in showers of sparks. They attacked each other’s blood, broke each other’s holds, and battered one another physically and mentally 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 last-ditch effort, Izak poured forth fire and ice and plague. Twenty-six never faltered. The prince might kill him, but not fast enough. The pirate broke through the final layer of defenses, catching Izak by the throat as thorns burst through Twenty-six’s flesh.

  Unlike previous tournaments, 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 in Twenty-six’s grasp like a piece of skewered meat. The prince tried 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 opponent.

  Twenty-six rested his swordbreaker beneath Izak’s jaw. The prince’s thundering heartbeat 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 combat, you cannot withhold the death blow.”

  ***

  As Lathe had managed to 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 recent growth spurt, Twenty-six had lost the height advantage—she now stood an inch taller than her longhaired brother. His shoulders were wider, but carrying her twin steels, she could match his reach. She knew he was figuring that his best options were to stay inside her range and use her eye against her.

  But that old crow master had brought more back than disappointment in her lack of training during his absence.

  “Being wild as the wind will only help you when you can see your opponent,” 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 accident. You’ve got to make sure you’re covered, even when you can’t see what’s coming.”

  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 cutlass. That ugly swordbreaker raced in behind, but Lathe spun and caught the dagger on her steel. The serrations bit notches into her sword, but she whirled away from the strike, slipping free before he could snap the blade.

  “Lathe?” Saint Daven had said when she told him the name she’d chosen. “Makes sense. A lathe spins, and you’re always spinning even though I told you never to turn your back on a blade.”

  “I’m faster than a blade, me.”

  “Blades 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 opponents backed away. Unfortunately for her, the pirate scum had seen it happen too often to fall into the same trap. He pressed in closer, forcing her to face him head-on. Her defensive patterns blocked his blind-side blows, but he kept pushing closer and closer, until she was backed up against the thorn tree.

  And blame 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 flashed around behind Twenty-six, disappearing and reappearing.

  That was what the pirate scum had been waiting for. The second 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 blade out of the air. She let it fly, grabbing a fistful of his long hair instead, and tried to hack into his face with her other sword.

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

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

  “Winner! Twenty-six,” Fright yelled, shoving in between them in case the volatile 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.”

  A Dance With Dragons over the Christmas break, the last (so far) in the George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books.

  Did you like the show Game of Thrones?