Happy Pi Day, friends! Thanks for reading! Do you know I scheduled this to publish at 4.13pm on 3.14? Did you know I did it because I'm a dork? :P

  Enjoy your pi, and I'll see you Monday with the next chapter!

  (Hint: It's going to be a gory one, if we know Lathe.)e

  (P.S. if you don't want to wait, or if you just want to binge a whole bunch of episodes at once, chapters on my Patreon are almost to the end of Book 2: Madness of Princes, avaible to all levels.)

  The fourth-year bracket concluded two nights ter under more subdued circumstances. Though the fourth-years were as skilled and capable as any fighters to come out of Thornfield, it was generally agreed that the bad luck was theirs to be so outshined by the css below them. In a hundred years, they couldn’t match the excitement the prince, the pirate, and the berserker could drum up.

  But the grafting would come the next night and the fourth-years would have their due. Between Crown Prince Etianiel and the king, every man of the seniors was needed, and several third-years.

  The bailey was quiet that afternoon, slowing down for a long day’s rest after the excitement of the tournament and the massive supper the kitchens had prepared to impress the royal visitors. Spring clouds were blowing in a storm, but the sun poked through here and there. A couple first-years left the stables and headed for the bathhouse to wash away the remains of their daily chores before bed.

  Four had already retired for the day, and somewhere up on the wall, Twenty-six was on patrol with a handful of other third- and fourth-years.

  Lathe lounged on the stairs to the keep, idly tapping one sword against her boot. The old crow ought to turn up soon. If he didn’t, she could caw at him for being te and zy for once.

  “Well, lookit who’s yin’ around like a real big britches,” Scabs drawled, strolling out of the keep.

  Lathe hadn’t seen anybody come from the dining hall in a good long while. Either Scabs had taken his time eating or he’d gotten scullery duties in the kitchens. She hoped it was the tter.

  She pierced him with her left-eyed gre. “Lookit who’s walking around like ain’t nobody got twin bdes with his name writ on ’em.”

  “I am feelin’ mighty fine, me.” Scabs hooked his thumbs in his belt and rocked on his heels. “The king’s here, ya know.”

  Lathe shrugged. “I done seen him three times. But might be you ain’t got the experience with royalty like I got. You’re just a little first-year.”

  “First-year this. If’n I go to the king today and talk, a certain brat’ll get throwed outta here on her ugly little snoot. I never been safer. One word from me, and you’re back on your knees, pleasin’ the uphill folk.”

  Lathe turned her bde so it caught the gray afternoon light. “Mighty hard to tell tales with a sword shoved down your throat.”

  Scabs grinned. “I already knowed that, so I figured a solution. See, I got a friend watching. If I get dead or hurt, he’s fixing to run a-hoopin’ and a-hollerin’. But if I give him the right wave, he comes on out and we all three of us have a good time.”

  A bad medicine feeling crept into Lathe’s gut. She gnced upwards to see whether the moon was fixing to hide behind the ghost city when the sun went down.

  “What about if I pop a hole in your gut, shove my fist up inside, and make you wave like a street puppet?”

  “He’ll see that afore you’re done getting your hand all the way up in there.” Scabs patted his stomach. “I’m stringy as a old cat, me.”

  Lathe thumbed her bde’s edge. “How’s about you quit your yakkin’ and tell me what you want already?”

  “Me and my friend been wantin’ a little uphill pleasin’ our own selfs. We’re figuring on Brat’s old specialty, us. Without all the snottin’ and cryin’, a’course.”

  Normally, impulse would have sent Lathe flying into action long before that point. This time, impulse was strangely quiet—maybe because she’d been plotting this murder all winter. Her chance had finally come, and she wasn’t fixing to mess it up.

  She squinted up at Scabs like he was stupid. “You fixin’ to do the bad stuff right out here, wheres anybody could walk by?”

  “My friend got us a shed where nobody ever comes in. He uses it all the time, him.”

  “With little first-years too scairt to tell on him. I already knowed it was Thirty.” She stood up. “Well, let’s go, us.”

  “You can leave them steels right ’chere.”

  Lathe jammed one sword into a crack between worn stone steps and let the other one drop where it was. Nobody would believe she left her twin swords behind of her own free will. The old crow ought to be around shortly, and Twenty-six would pass by at any minute and spot the abandoned bdes from up on the wall.

  But hopefully not soon enough to stop her.

  ***

  Grandmaster Heartless gave his report that afternoon to the king and the crown prince while the princess sat nearby, ostensibly reading. The young woman was like a stone statue, serene, silent, and still. Heartless didn’t think she turned a page in all the time he spoke about the fourth-years.

  Then it was time for the third-year students who would fill the gaps.

  “You’ve seen the top three,” Heartless said. “Prince Izak, the foreign pirate Twenty-six, and Lathe, the boy who won the third-year bracket. Lathe’s an excellent swordsman, favors the twin steels, but he’s not a strategist. He’ll need someone in authority to keep him in line and direct his energy. Under normal circumstances, I would advise the boy be among the graftings, Your Majesty, but this time I must caution against it.”

  Hazerial made a gesture of allowance. “We will hear your reason.”

  “Lathe is blind in his right eye. He’s learned to overcome the defect, but a Thorn with his weakness will always be a potential liability. I recommend a private posting, under an exceedingly command-oriented Thorn.”

  Prince Etianiel spoke up for the first time. “My brother said the boy’s best quality is his loyalty. In light of the grafting’s effects, what value do you pce on loyalty for prospective Thorns?”

  Grandmaster’s brows twitched together. The prince’s question was one Heartless would have expected to hear from Ikario, back when he’d served the previous sovereign.

  “It’s indispensable within the ranks, Your Highness. Infighting and mistrust can destroy a unit, rendering them worthless to their master.”

  “It’s loyalty to their master that I’m asking about. You’ve been grafted, Grandmaster. You’re uniquely poised to speak on the subject—especially since you’re renowned among the Thorns for openly disobeying Ikario.”

  Another direction Heartless hadn’t expected, and this with the man who had killed Ikario in the same room.

  King Hazerial’s dark eyes gave no indication of his feelings on the subject. He merely waited for Heartless to speak.

  Grandmaster composed his reply carefully. “Your grandfather was an enormous presence. My loyalty to him was what drove my disobedience. It saved his life, and he rewarded me with retirement.” He touched the thornknife at his side. “But I would gdly have served him to my death.”

  That st was a bit dangerous to admit. Had things gone that way, fate could have put Heartless between Hazerial and Ikario, but it was the truth.

  Still no reaction from His Majesty.

  “Was your loyalty driven by your grafting or your personal sentiment toward the man?” As Etianiel spoke, he angled his shoulders a fraction, his lenses fshing in the te afternoon light from the room’s sole window.

  It was a motion Heartless recognized from the best of swordsmen. Making minute, almost imperceptible changes of position to set up for the finishing thrust. Heartless couldn’t shake the feeling that if the crown prince’s attack were aimed at him, he would never have seen it coming. So for whom was Etianiel positioning?

  “One drives the other,” Grandmaster Heartless said while all this passed through his mind. “I was devoted to the crown and to my pce in the kingdom long before I was grafted. I saw becoming a Thorn as both an honor and a duty. After my grafting, it took very little time before I became friends with Ikario. Perhaps the grafting sustained my faith in him longer than it ought to have. Perhaps without it, I would have acted against him sooner.”

  “And the boy, Lathe?” Etianiel asked.

  “The staff calls him the berserker, after the ancient warriors of Far Qilon. He’s wild, impulsive, runs entirely on instinct, but he loves Prince Izak and the pirate. He would do anything for them, and I suspect they would do whatever they could for Lathe, within the bounds of reason. If Lathe came to love his master as well, that man could expect unwavering protection and service, unbounded by reason. But that recklessness is why I suggest he be grafted with a Thorn who has a firm hand, someone who can control his wilder impulses.”

  Hazerial hmmed, finally rejoining the conversation. “What would you say if the boy were grafted along with Prince Izak and the pirate?”

  The crown prince frowned at the king, but said nothing.

  “There wouldn’t be a man alive with a more powerful trio of Thorns,” Heartless said without hesitation.

  “Blind eye included?” the king asked.

  Grandmaster Heartless nodded. “They perfectly complement one another. What one cks, the others supply. The man who holds all three of those thornknives holds the world in his hands.”