Page 28

“Surprise!” Sharp hurled herself into her attack even before Einsa could get the word “edge” out, throwing her sword towards the roof, underarm, point first. It was a trick she’d tried dozens of times in the dorm room with Einsa’s knife, pulling it off maybe one time in five. She’d nearly lost a finger earlier in the year.

At the same time, she hurled herself forward, dropping to the floor beneath the dark-haired girl’s swinging blade. Sharp’s momentum, built in two quick steps, carried her feet-first into the ankles of her rearmost opponent, taking the girl’s legs out from beneath her. The big girl hit the floor as Sharp rolled into a crouch. Somewhere during that roll she contrived to catch the sword she had earlier thrown into the air. She snatched its hilt a yard above the ground and brought the blunt blade down on her fallen opponent in a beheading swing.

Swords, being steel bars, don’t need to carry an edge in order to severely fuck you up if they hit you in any part of the neck. The throat is particularly vulnerable.

If the two standing fifth years had acted quickly, Sharp would have ended up impaled on one or both of their blades. But Sharp had given them the promised surprise and, despite all that they must have seen across the course of five nightmare years, both let a beat pass. Sharp used that moment to snatch up the choking girl’s sword, discarding her own.

“You should take turns.” Sharp pushed red curls out of her face, grinning fiercely, the point of her new weapon levelled at the black-haired girl.

In the heartbeat in which the two fifth years exchanged a glance, considering the option, she attacked, targeting the second of the larger girls, who parried too late, taking a bloody slice across her ribs.

“You can go.” Sharp danced back out of range.

The wounded acolyte cursed and spat, then despite the accusing glare of her friend, and the judgement of the three additional fifth years who’d come to join the audience, she limped off, clutching her side with crimson fingers.

“Just you and me,” Sharp said. She frowned. “Is it ‘you and I’? I never can tell. I hope they teach us…”

The dark-haired girl came at her with controlled fury, stepping over the friend who still lay on the floor clutching at her crushed throat and making horrible wet noises.

Sharp stood her ground, and they crossed swords. “Ha!” She danced away once more. “You nearly got me.”

But for Sharp’s outrageous reactions, and her instinct for the fight that seemed to have been in her from the moment she landed wet and bloody on the birthing mat, she would have lost her sword hand or at the least been sliced from the heel of her palm to her inner elbow. The fifth year might not be good for a fifth year, but she wasn’t terrible either, and compared to the third years, new to the art, she might as well be a hero stepping from legend.

Sharp let out an unearthly scream and threw herself at the girl. In the next fraction of a heartbeat both of them were on the ground, Sharp on top, her blade through the acolyte’s shoulder, one foot pinning the girl’s sword hand to the floor by the wrist. The screams as Sharp moved her sword as if churning butter echoed through the Wound Garden, ceasing only when the dark-haired girl fainted from the pain.

Sharp left the sword standing, recovered her practice blade, and went on out into the hall. Her attack shouldn’t have worked. But it did. Behind her, the third-year acolytes swarmed the two wounded fifth years, stealing everything of worth. Einsa couldn’t bring herself to join them.

“What even was that?” Gholla asked, looking close to vomiting.

“That,” Mollandra said, following in the victor’s footsteps, “was Sharp.”

Einsa swapped a look with Tmanga, finding the girl’s dark eyes unreadable, shrugged in the hope it would free her of the horrified amazement weighing on her shoulders, and finding that it did not, followed Mollandra.

In all her time at the Academy, Einsa had carried with her the unshakeable conviction that she would be one of the three survivors. The testing, the killing, all the horror was merely the process of deciding which pair of her fellow acolytes would be graduating with her. She had thought that one of them would be Bek, based partly on the girl’s calm confidence but mainly on her gut feeling. She had believed that Mollandra would fall early on, and only recently had truly begun to understand that the girl had a different kind of steel at her core. Looking around herself of late, Einsa had started to wonder for the first time where her own place among the final three was. And if there even was one.

Ashort while later the class was in pairs scattered across the fight floor. Sharp’s victims had been dragged away to die somewhere less inconvenient. In the surprising event that either survived, then they’d be unlikely to last to the end of the week. Being injured or ill did not grant an acolyte any respite from the Academy’s constant training, challenges, and threats.

“What’s up?” Mollandra swung a side cut, the blow they were to practise.

“I’m fine.” Einsa parried the blow. “I’m always fine.”

“You lie well with your mouth.” Mollandra swung again, hard, fast, accurate.

“Well, thank you, Molly. I think that’s the nicest thing anyo—” Einsa swung back, Mollandra deflecting the blow without effort. “—anyone’s ever said to me.”

“But your body gives you away. You hunch up when you’re sad. You did it after Bek. For a long time.”

“You did too,” Einsa muttered. Mollandra had been inconsolable. Full of wrath and sorrow. “We both did.”

Mollandra nodded. “You’re doing it now.”

“I’m not sad,” Einsa lied. All of them were sad, of course, apart from a few crazies like Sharp. And, strangely, Einsa had never really been able to read Mollandra. She’d thought her a friend—she had to be a friend, after Bek there was no one left—she had thought her friend was an open book, only to realize that she’d been reading what she was given and had never even turned the true cover.

“Well, cheer up. We’ve got Dungeon Class next.” Another cut, this one almost too fast for Einsa to turn away.

Einsa struck back, unable to keep a smile from twisting her face. Dungeon Class with Instructor Akki was the worst of the lot.

15