The weather at Thornfield turned cold earlier than usual, driving training inside, and making patrols on the wall a frozen, agonizing affair. Fevers and croup ran through ranks in the confined spaces, killing off a handful of students.

  Much like Lathe had the previous winters, Scabs got a runny nose when the cold weather hit and kept it until spring. He made a habit of poking out his tongue and licking the snot from his top lip, chapping the skin red. He coughed once and came down with a scratchy voice for a few nights, but never caught a full croup, and never came close to dying like Lathe hoped.

  “Ya know,” Scabs told her while they were paired together during training, “I figure I did see Pretty after you left, at the Carnival of the Dead. Only I couldn’t hardly know her for what-all the dead temperers done to her.”

  “You lie!”

  “Me and Ratface seen her, us. Her skin was all swirled up with marks, and her teef was pointy, and her eyes was glowin’ like a ghost city. She was done up like a fancy fright’em and dancin’ in the parade.”

  If Master Saint Galen hadn’t gnced their way at exactly the right moment, Scabs would’ve died with his head scissored off by Lathe’s twin swords. Luckily for Scabs, and infuriatingly for Lathe, the gold-eyed weapons master’s whip shed out, snatched her by the ankle, and ripped her off her feet before she snapped the bdes closed.

  Scabs escaped the incident with a few minor cuts that his blood magic healed in under a night. Lathe got scullery duty rather than scourging, because no one could prove she hadn’t been trying a variation on the sword drills. And for his part, Scabs backed up her lie, grinning sidelong at her the whole time.

  “S’ppose I killt somebody here,” Lathe said casually to Master Saint Daven during her next sword lesson. “Might be I’d get scourged, sure, but would Grandmaster still let me be a Thorn?”

  “Get those heavy swords up. Treat them like your regur steels.” Saint Daven had learned not to answer questions like that from Lathe. He was curious, though. “Who are you pnning to kill?”

  “Nobody.” Lathe swung the weighted swords up to meet the master’s attack. “Anyhow, if I was, it’d just be a dumb snakebelly scab-eater nobody’d miss.”

  “You told one of the masters?” Izak snorted when Lathe told her brothers how unhelpful the dumb ol’ crow had been. “You really are stupid. Now if Scabs dies, you’ll be the first suspect, no matter how he goes.”

  “I ain’t stupid!” Lathe smacked Izak’s cup off the supper table. “If I had brothers that helped me get rid of that nasty flea instead a’ just making excuses and letting him sleep in my bunk, I wouldn’t hafta tell no one.”

  “He doesn’t sleep in your bunk,” Twenty-six said. “He sleeps in the bunk above mine.”

  “Both them top bunks are mine!”

  “Now that you mention it,” Izak said, “you’re hardly ever in the room anymore. Where have you been sleeping?”

  “Don’t you no never-mind where I been sleeping.”

  Most days when she wasn’t on patrol, Lathe slept in the kitchens, in front of the hearth with the cook’s apprentices. When she could sneak out to the vilge, however, the girls at the public house let her sleep in their bed in the celr. Neither Casia nor Danasi actually slept upstairs in the beds they entertained in.

  “It’s not healthy,” Casia expined as she tucked Lathe in. “Besides, who would want to sleep where they work?”

  “You figure if I lured Scabs out here and killt him, one a’ you gals could say you done it?”

  “No. How would you lure him here, anyway?”

  “I’d tell him I could get him in with one a’ you.” Now and again, just to make sure she wasn’t missing out on any information Scabs was withholding about Pretty, Lathe would use her invisibility to follow him and Thirty. “He’s mighty keen on getting with a gal, him. He’s always scheming on it with that fathead Thirty when nobody else is around. Thirty gots a couple little first-years doing the bad stuff with him, but Scabs don’t like it none with guys, I guess. I figure I say one word about sneaking him out to you, and that nit-louse’ll come running right quick.”

  “Well, you’re not dragging us into a murder plot.” Danasi crossed the celr and grabbed a handful of onions and mealy potatoes to stretch the pub’s stew. “Especially not at our busiest time of year.”

  Lathe scratched her nose. “You two ain’t no more help than my brothers.”

  Danasi ignored her and pointed a potato at Casia. “Marek’s looking for ‘that enchanting sister of mine.’ Widow Rima just paid him for a table mend, and he’s itching to spend it.”

  Casia stood and tweaked Lathe’s nose. “No murder here, all right?”

  “No murder here in winter.” Lathe turned on her side in the celr bed and pulled the covers up to her ears. “Might be one in spring, though, when business slows down.”

  ***

  Despite what Lathe thought, Izak was trying to solve their fourth-man problem. He ran through a score of scenarios every night trying to devise a way to get Scabs out of their hair. The effect that sleazy close-rat had on Lathe got under Izak’s skin. Not only that, but Twenty-six kept pointing out that the moment a more attractive offer than a silver a week came along, Scabs would jump on it.

  More immediately frustrating, however, was the fact that in the nine months since they had been saddled with the new arrival, Izak had only been to the pub three times. Three times! And all three had been rushed, crammed in between horsemanship lessons he didn’t need and hurrying to get back before he was scheduled for patrol. Teikru’s blessing was screaming at him constantly. He could barely think.

  “You’re supposed to be the strategic genius,” he snapped at the pirate. “Why haven’t you come up with anything yet?”

  But Twenty-six had been preoccupied tely as well.

  He’d gone to the pub one time since their roommate moved in, and spent the day listening to the local dirters gossip about their kingdom’s wars.

  “They’re talking like the prince is gonna bring about the end of the Het.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I heard he’s been cutting off pointy ears by the wagonload. He’ll send ’em running back to their whore mothers.”

  “That’s all fine and good for them innd folks, but what about us down here on the sea? Light, Breakwater wasn’t but a month ago. The pirates could sail up here any day.”

  “Let ’em come, I say. You heard we took a whole ship of ’em off Big Harbor?”

  “About time we sent a few savages to the strong gods’ hell. Get back what they killed of ours.”

  “Oh, we’re killing plenty savages out on the water. This time, we took the bastards alive.”

  Twenty-six’s blood ran cold. He strained his ears for every word the dirters said.

  “Dragged thirty or forty of ’em off their boat, screaming and crying like little girls. Got ’em halfway to a sacramental before one broke loose and killed the rest. Just goes to show, though, it’s only a matter of time before we’re enthralling pirates by the score. They’ll be as common as every other kinda bloodsve you can think of.”

  “How’s that supposed to help us? Name somebody in Sandshells with the coin to buy a bloodsve.”

  “It helps us because it scares the pirates from attacking our nd. They’re big men when they’re chopping their women’s heads off, but catch ’em and they’re no tougher than babes off the tit.”

  As many as forty Ocean Rovers dragged ashore. A raed ship’s worth of men cut off from the God of the Waves, not so they could be executed like the men of his tribe had been or Marked by their abominable king, but to suffer the humiliation of the blood drinkers’ sve trade.

  If one raed ship could be captured alive, more could be taken as well. In time, the dirters might manage to take a greatship. If the raedrs weren’t fast enough, if they hesitated in sending their wives on to paradise as Araam had done, the women could be ensved by these monsters.

  Twenty-six didn’t want to believe that another Ocean Rover could equal his cowardice, but what if the dirters managed to get one of his people to their king? Twenty-six had seen what the prince could do with blood magic. What if the king could extract the way to Cryst’holm from an Ocean Rover? Then it wouldn’t only be men and women that they could take, but children and elders.

  His hand tightened on his cup until the pottery groaned. He had to kill the dirter king during the spring grafting. No matter what Izak said or did to deter him, this time, the king would die.