We're so close to the end of Book 1! Only two more chapters after today! :'(

  Well, enough crying over spilt blood. We're going straight through the weekend with these chapters! Today, Sunday, and Monday!

  Let's get on with the funeral!e

  The first-years had dumped Lathe into the side of the rubbish pit closest to the walls and left without covering her in sand, probably in a hurry to get rid of the corpse and get back to watching the successful graftings.

  One arm was twisted beneath her back, and her head hung too loose on her neck, gssy eyes half-lidded, one waxy-white ear resting on an old joint of pig. The runt’s shirt gapped open, exposing her breasts and the bloody wound between them.

  It occurred to Izak that the first-years might not have covered her with sand because they’d been too busy gawking, ughing at her or lusting after her, and for the first time in his life he wanted to kill someone.

  He skimmed down the sandy slope, sinking to his knees in the refuse at the bottom. Odds and ends stabbed at his calves and crumbled beneath his boots. He jerked her shirt closed and tied the ces, his eyes burning.

  Between Izak below and the pirate above, they managed to wrestle her out of the pit. She was much heavier in death. No more scrawny bird-boned brat.

  Rain hissed on the sand as Aan carried her down to the water’s edge. With a gentleness that belied the scowl on his face, he washed the sand and bits of refuse from her face and hair.

  Etian and Kelena stood a ways off, out of the surf’s reach. The crown prince’s Thorns gathered around him, the princess shrinking away from her brother and the unfamiliar men.

  Izak’s grafting urged and begged and cwed at him, demanding he return to his brother. Aan must be feeling the same insistent draw toward Kelena as he scrubbed the mud from Lathe’s clothes, hands, and boots. Over and over again, the pirate looked back at his new mistress as if to reassure himself that she was still alive.

  “Why not leave Lathe in the pit?” Aan asked, his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry. “Isn’t that what dirters do with their dead?”

  “Depends on how important you are. Royalty get tombs, merchants get graves.” Izak tried a ugh, but it caught in his throat. “Likely the runt wouldn’t even have had that if she’d died in Siu Carinal.” He wiped the rain from his brow, then scowled at the stink of rotting trash and grit of sand on his hand. “Little idiot should’ve stayed there.”

  Aan sat back on his heels and hooked the wet hair from Lathe’s forehead with one finger. She was as clean as she was going to get.

  “I just didn’t want her down there alone,” Izak said.

  It occurred to him that Scabs and Thirty’s bodies were somewhere in the rubbish, already covered in sand, but in many ways that was worse. Buried forever with two men she hated.

  The pirate’s stony scowl deepened. He scanned the waves. He gnced over his shoulder at Kelena again, then turned back, resting an elbow on his knee.

  “There’s a riptide there.” He pointed southeast. “It will take her body out to sea instead of returning her to the shore.” He gred down at Lathe’s still face, and a note of apology bled into his voice. “I cannot go farther than this. Can you?”

  Etian had become the magnetic pole of Izak’s universe. Imagining swimming away from his brother made cold fingers of dread squeeze Izak’s chest. Anything could happen to Etian while he was in the water.

  But there were seven other Thorns watching over his brother. If what Ondreus had said was true, then the pull must be seven times worse for Aan. The pirate was the only one protecting Kelena.

  “I’ll take her,” Izak said. “Point that tide out to me again.”

  The pirate did. “When you feel the grasp of an underwater hand, let her go and swim back. If you wait too long, the ocean will pull you under.”

  Izak picked up the runt’s body. Water cascaded from her clothes and short hair, making a sound as if the surf were boiling around his feet.

  Aan pressed his hand to Lathe’s forehead and closed his eyes. “God of the Waves, be merciful to her. Wash her clean in the sun and the salt and take her into your hand.”

  Izak swallowed the pain in his throat and hefted the runt to get a better grip. He squeezed her against his chest and felt the waxy resistance of cold, wet, dead flesh. He wished there was something he could say to her, for her, but all that he could think was that she’d made everything so much more complicated. Even this.

  The pirate let his hand drop.

  Izak walked out into the water. The pull to turn back and run to Etian grew stronger the farther he went. The waves crashed against him, trying to knock him over with his burden.

  Once he made it deep enough, he was able to rest Lathe on the surface of the water and simply guide her forward. Waves spshed into her nose and mouth, washed over her half-open eyes, but she didn’t care. Water wasn’t bad medicine anymore. Nothing was.

  He passed the point where his feet could touch and began to wonder whether he would recognize the riptide or miss it completely. Through his boots and pants he might not feel the grip the pirate had mentioned. Suppose he’d already swum past it. Suppose he had swum too slowly and it was already gone. Izak didn’t know anything about the ocean; he was the st person who should have volunteered for this fool’s errand. Light, he was likely the reason Hazerial had killed Lathe in the first pce. If she’d never met Izak, she might still be alive.

  These dark considerations broke off suddenly when something grabbed at Izak’s legs. He kicked backward instinctually, felt it tangling with his limbs, tearing at his clothing, dragging him down.

  That was the riptide, then. He kicked harder, breaking free of its cws.

  Izak kissed the runt on the temple, treading water.

  “Lathe wasn’t a stupid name.” He gave her a shove toward the current. “I was just jealous that you got to choose it.”

  The riptide took hold of her. She swirled slowly, head falling back, baring her pale throat and pointing her chin to the sky, before that invisible hand jerked her under.

  Underwater, tiny bubbles drifted up from her nose and mouth and the hole in her chest. She was visible for a moment, a dancer hanging midturn, and then Izak couldn’t see her anymore.

  How easy would it be to follow her down? Everyone would think it had been an accident. Or treachery by the pirate; that he’d sent the prince out to die.

  The grafting wouldn’t let Izak go. Etian needed him. Etian had to be protected. Etian’s wellbeing was Izak’s first consideration from now until death.

  A salty wave flowed into Izak’s mouth. He spat it out. “If the Bsphemous One exists, Lathe, he owes you an apology for everything he stole from you.”

  Another tug from the riptide. Izak turned around and kicked for shore.

  ***

  Hidden from sight and a measure of the rain in the lee of the wall, Saint Daven watched the half-blind berserker swallowed up by the waves.

  Four returned to shore. The prince and the pirate followed their new masters and the contingent of Thorns to the gatehouse.

  A symptom of a people who worship death and eat their own children. That was what Lord Paius had called Thornfield.

  “Shook his fist at it with one hand and held the thornknife with the other,” Saint Galen muttered.

  “He was a good man.” Saint Daven pushed away from the wall and started for the vilge. “And as much as it makes me sick to say it, his son’s a better one.”

  “Guess that’s it for our teaching career.”

  Saint Daven walked backwards a ways without answering, taking what he hoped was his st look at Thornfield’s stark, utilitarian battlements through the curtain of droplets. The shadowed tower of the keep and the thorny, dead-looking branches of the great locust tree loomed over it all.

  “Grandmaster was right about one thing.” He turned around and faced the direction he was going. “A Thorn doesn’t have the luxury of retreating. We push forward, always.”