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There had been a time when for lives of men the words she had just spoken would open a path to the object of a Kindness’s wrath through all and any opposition.

The mercenaries hesitated, glanced around nervously at their numbers, and came forward.

Times change.

Cries from the house brought the mercenaries to a halt before they’d closed half the distance to her.

Necromancy involves the working of a muscle. Not of the body, and maybe not even of the mind, but a muscle even so. Perhaps it was the spirit that was exercised. Rue had never had such power, but using what few necromancies she had left the Academy with had been similar to her current experience, albeit on a smaller scale. The muscle grew tired and needed rest. Pitting one brother against the other had stretched even her newfound might, and having any of the trio she’d killed back in Debban’s ale hut march along with her would not have allowed her to recover that strength.

Now she brought Isik out among his former underlings, staggering like a drunk, his neck crimson below the wound that had killed him, his padded doublet thick with gore.

The men around him cried out in fear. They’d seen and carried out all manner of horrors, but even so, the breaking of a law so fundamental as that of death will unsettle the boldest. Rue still remembered the reaction of fourscore young girls when Lucia Aqualas Divinanar had unexpectedly sat up at Kindness Undu’s request. The hardened mercenaries before her showed a similar response.

“Isik is all I need from you.” Rue met the woman’s gaze since she alone had set her back to the dead man and returned her eyes to the true threat.

“I was wrong,” the woman said. “Take her alive.”

14

Einsa

Year Three

Everyone understood that Sharp was crazy. None of them had understood quite how crazy until Kindness Terra put a sword in her hand in Year Three.

Einsa took to the sword well, just as she had taken to the knife. Her mother had shown her the rudiments not long after Einsa had started to walk. She had learned in a single day lessons that most children acquire over years. Her mother hadn’t told her not to run with scissors, she had told her not to fall over.

Einsa had few equals in the class when it came to swinging a sword. Tmanga, Brooth, Mollandra, and Thurli were all good, but Sharp was in a league of her own, as if she had found a lover rather than a blade.

In the winter while the east winds howled around the Academy’s fortress walls, leaching heat from already cold stone and trying to tear loose every shutter, the third year came once more to the Wound Garden. Sharp, with Mollandra to her left and Einsa to her right, bustled in through the doors, already equipped with a training blade from the stores.

“It’s a carnage kind of day.” Sharp swung the blunted sword left and right, almost catching the robes of the acolytes ahead of her.

“Watch it.” Tmanga glanced back, getting out of Sharp’s way.

Three fifth-year girls strode towards the exit, among the last of their class to leave the chamber. Each carried an earned blade, long, thin, bearing a slight curve to aid the slice.

“Scram!” The foremost of the trio was a hard-faced girl with short black hair and a slice across her cheek weeping blood that oozed down over old scars.

Einsa stepped aside with the rest. Big as she was, two of these three matched her height and all of them could teach her a short, fatal lesson on the combat floor.

“I said scram.”

“Don’t want to.” Sharp stood her ground.

Einsa reached for her shoulder to pull her aside. “They’ll kill you.” But Sharp slipped away with a shrug.

The trio were far from the best swords in their year, but even to be drawing breath after five years in the Academy meant you were a survivor. Some called it luck, but Einsa knew differently. Some people were just harder to kill than others, and it wasn’t down to any particular skill. They were the weeds, there among the crop the whole time, but when the blight came, or a tyrant salted the ground, they remained, as others fell.

In addition, each of these girls had seven times the sword training that Sharp had, seven seasons to her single season. It was nonsense.

“There are three of them,” Mollandra said.

Her warning implied misplaced trust in Sharp’s ability to defeat even a single fifth year, along with underlining their friend’s sudden and inexplicable inability to count.

“Give it up.” Tmanga sounded bored. “Take the beating.” Despite Sharp abandoning her after Wenda’s death, Tmanga had shown no signs of bearing a grudge. She was right too—unless Sharp attacked them the acolytes couldn’t kill her. They could and would use her insolence as justification for a beating, though.

“Your sword doesn’t even have an—”