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“Prince Cormac and his lovely bride Princess Scalla—the man eater. Out of Regon. Princesses being the primary export of Regon on account of their ‘king,’ Handelf, only sowing girls in his wife’s furrow, but lots of them. Prince Cormac is our king’s younger brother.”

“Cormac…Scalla,” Mollandra repeated, committing them to memory.

“Don’t forget the heir, Sunder, the pretty princeling,” Einsa added.

Bek twisted her mouth, studying Mollandra more closely. “How far did your father bring you?” She could imagine Mollandra being raised in some broken-down farm on the outskirts of a peasant hamlet, but such people were unlikely to travel any great distance, even for the Academy’s copper. She surely had to have come from within the borders of Abrona, and yet here she was struggling to remember the name of the king’s own brother. “What was the nearest town to yours?”

“I…” Mollandra looked more uncomfortable than when Instructor Suni had made her face up to Thurli, a solid girl nearly twice her weight, and told them to fight until one of them was bleeding. “I come from the city.” Her hands closed into the same fists that had bloodied Thurli’s nose.

Einsa stood up, towering over Mollandra. “That city?” She pointed through the courtyard walls in the direction of Tandra-ah, just a few miles away. The city walls, along with the spires jutting over them and the low town sprawled beyond their limit, could all be seen from the Academy’s bell towers. “Is that the one you came from?”

Mollandra nodded, eyes narrow.

“What’s it called?”

Bek snorted. Einsa had made a joke to break the tension, a question so laughably easy that Mollandra would grin, and they could start to fill in some of the gaps in her education.

“T…” The girl struggled, as if willing the name onto her tongue. “Tandar.” She spat it out quickly, her voice muffled.

“Tandar?” Einsa asked.

Mollandra nodded.

“You think Tandra-ah, Abrona’s second city, the place where you were born, is called Tandar?”

“That’s what I said. Tandra-ah.”

Bek put her hand to Einsa’s thick upper arm. “It’s what she said.”

“Huh.” Einsa folded her arms and sat back down. She shook her head. “You, Bek, are too kind to be a Kindness.”

Bek opened her hands helplessly. “I can’t be what they want, so I may as well be what I want.”

Einsa growled, as if trying to manufacture the anger she needed in order to break with them and go her own way. “She’s not going to repay you, you know that? Even if we do help her. Even in the unlikely event that she does survive the year and become a half-decent acolyte. She won’t save you when you need saving. None of us can look out for anyone else. Not if we want to survive.”

“It’s true.” Mollandra’s small voice broke into the silence that followed Einsa’s challenge. “I’m not a good person. I will let you down. Again.”

“Again?” Bek tried to ask, but Einsa surged to her feet, her growl louder than before.

“Teach her yourself, Saint Bek. The stray’s just going to get you killed.” And with that, she stomped away.

11

Bek

Year Two

Instructor Mary had barely survived her time as an acolyte, and before the Kindnesses offered her a rare reprieve and disfigured her by cutting off her nose, she had been maimed during her training. Three fingers from her right hand had been given to the cause, along with her left eye.

What the cause was, and why it was worthy of such sacrifice, Bek had yet to discover. Instructor Mary’s acceptance of a life where day in and day out she helped drill the act of murder into children, in a process that would kill nearly all of them, enraged Bek. So far, the main lesson that a year at the Academy had taught her was to hate the institution and each of the components that made it function.

“We’re falling behind again,” Einsa huffed.

The forest hemmed them in, sealing away all but a thin grey ribbon of sky where the path ran. Each bend removed the rest of the class from sight, and by Bek’s count over fifty of the second year were ahead of them, with just Sallay, Mirina, and Thurli behind them. One sick, one hobbling on an infected foot, and the other slow but relentless. Thurli would overtake them soon enough if Bek couldn’t pick up her pace. And when Thurli passed by, it would leave just two girls between Bek and the instructor stalking them through the leaf-choked paths.

Technically it would leave Einsa and Mollandra there too, but Einsa could keep herself out of trouble, and Mollandra seemed able to run all day, perhaps because she was so light that the wind carried her along.

They called it the Hard Run and it had started in the second year, proving to be a monthly event. The girl who came last was killed, but only if she failed to complete the circuit within the time allotted by the water clock.