Nineteen years before the events of In the Shadow of Lightning…

1

The coach service left Montego al’Bou on a busy street corner he did not recognize, in a city he did not know, surrounded by the most people he’d ever seen in his short life. Every sense assaulted him at once: overwhelming smells, unending sounds, new sights. Afternoon traffic practically buzzed around him as carriages and carts rattled along the cobbled streets, the horrendous noise filled around the edges by constant conversation. A teamster jogged by with a flour sack she carried easily on her shoulder; a tiny forgeglass stud sat in her ear to augment her strength. She swore at Montego when he didn’t move out of the way fast enough.

This was Ossa, the capital of the Ossan Empire, the largest and most powerful nation in the world—a city so wealthy that even the lowest of the commoners had godglass. Montego had been here for five minutes, and he found it stinky and loud. He tried not to think about how badly he stuck out with his simple provincial tunic or the rucksack made of old semaphore flags hanging from the end of his grandmother’s cudgel.

“Excuse me,” he tried to say to a passing pedestrian. He was ignored. “Can you tell me . . .” he tried again, to the same result. He felt his big round cheeks grow red, which made them grow redder still, knowing how easily they conveyed his embarrassment to others. “Pardon me . . .”

He searched for anything familiar, hoping for something that might ground him in such an alien place. Someone bumped into him. By instinct he snatched at the hand reaching into his pocket. A small child, probably not that much younger than him, looked up at him in surprise and tried to babble an excuse.

“No,” Montego said firmly, shoving the child away. In the provinces such a bold pickpocket would get the back of his hand, but he did not yet know how they dealt with such things here.

Montego needn’t have bothered anyways. There was nothing in there to pickpocket. His last few ozzo, the tiny inheritance Grandma left him, had been spent coming here to the capital. He shifted on his feet and searched the streets once more, trying to decide where to start, wondering if he’d been conned. Grandma always said Ossa was filled with nothing but cons, from the guild-families all the way down.

His despair was beginning to rise when a carriage rattled up to the street corner. The carriage had silver trim and beautiful curtains of royal purple, marked with an inverted triangle splayed with cracked lightning. It was a symbol he recognized, and he dug into his rucksack to find a worn purple handkerchief that matched it. Yes, this was the right one: the sigil of the Grappo guild-family.

The driver hopped down and peered at him. “Are you Montego?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” Montego held out the handkerchief helpfully, but the driver didn’t take it. He simply opened the door and gestured for Montego to climb inside. When he did, he quickly found that he was not alone. The spacious interior, much bigger than the coach service he took to get here from the provinces, had two other occupants. The first was a stately woman, perhaps in her midthirties, with curly black hair and a soft face but severe eyes. She had the dark olive skin of the Ossan elite and wore a richly brocaded tunic that made him feel less than poor.

The second occupant was a boy. Montego always struggled with the ages of other children. They all looked so tiny next to his massive bulk. The boy was at least a couple years younger than him. Nine? Ten? It was impossible to tell, not helped by the fact that the boy was pressed up against the opposite door, staring out the window, gracing Montego with little more than a glance. He was a runt, but a well-dressed one.

They sat in silence for several moments as the carriage began to roll uncomfortably along the cobbles, and Montego realized he had no idea how to speak properly to an Ossan guild-family member. Did he bow? Grovel? Manners were very important here, Grandma had told him. At least until they weren’t.

Not very helpful, Grandma.

“Montego al’Bou,” Montego introduced himself, ducking his head and holding out the old purple handkerchief.

The woman took it from him thoughtfully, rubbing the threadbare silk between her fingers. She had a large tattoo on the back of her right hand, a sigil matching the one on the carriage curtains and the handkerchief. Montego knew enough about sigils to understand it marked her as the matriarch of an important guild-family. “Adriana Grappo,” the woman introduced herself. “The rude boy beside me is my son, Demir. Tell me, are you really just twelve years old?”

Montego glanced at Demir, but the other boy didn’t rise to his mother’s provocation. “Almost thirteen, ma’am.”

“Your grandmother’s letter said you were a big boy. I didn’t realize she meant it literally.”

“Just shy of six feet, ma’am,” Montego said, hunching his shoulders. Everyone always talked about his height, or his apple-rosy cheeks, or his heavyset frame. He wished they’d talk about something else, but what was there? He didn’t know these people, and they didn’t know him. He felt his poor clothes in the rich carriage most acutely in this moment, and wished suddenly that he’d stayed in the provinces. Grandma’s cudgel lay across his knees, and he gripped it as he might an oak in a storm.

Adriana’s eyes dipped to the weapon. “Your grandmother was a popular provincial cudgelist, wasn’t she?”

“In her youth, ma’am.”

“I see. Do you know the story of this handkerchief?” Adriana asked, giving it a little wave.

Montego shook his head. “Only that it was sent to my village after my mother died in the wars.” He lifted his head, making sure he spoke clearly. Never show any weakness to anyone in the capital, Grandma had always told him. Not a hint of emotion. Not that he had any to show, for the word mother had never meant anything to him. She died when he was a year old. He didn’t even remember her face.

“Your mother took a bullet for my mother,” Adriana explained, handing the handkerchief back to him. “My mother has been dead for six years, but I will honor her debt. You will live with us in the Hyacinth Hotel, where you will be—”

“You live in a hotel?” Montego blurted before he could stop himself. He felt himself flush with embarrassment the moment the words left his mouth.

If anything, Adriana seemed amused by the outburst. “Indeed we do. The Grappo are a small guild-family, and the hotel is one of our sources of income and ideally situated near the Assembly, where I am a politician. As I was saying, you will live with us at the Hyacinth and be taught how to live, survive, and thrive in the capital. You seem well-spoken. You have an education?”

“I helped my grandmother in the semaphore tower, signaling news to and from passing ships,” Montego explained, “so I had to learn to read and write. She taught me some history and literature too.”

“Excellent.” Adriana glanced out the window. “The new school year starts in a few weeks. I’ll pull some strings to get you admitted alongside Demir. The larger guild-families are always a pain in the ass about who attends the academy, so don’t let me down, hmm?”

“I . . . I want to be a cudgelist, ma’am,” Montego ventured. The sullen boy glanced at him sharply but said nothing. “Like Grandma. She wouldn’t have any talk of it when she was alive, but it’s in my blood. That’s what I want to do.”

Adriana pursed her lips in a way that was either amused or annoyed. Montego couldn’t tell. “Your grandmother asked that you be given an education and a good, safe, secure job. You and I will both honor her wishes.”

Montego didn’t really know how to respond, so he ducked his head in agreement. “Yes, ma’am.” He turned to Demir and ducked his head once more. “I look forward to attending school with you.”

Demir glanced over his shoulder at Montego. Their eyes met briefly, and Montego was immediately struck by the cool, almost challenging confidence in them. There was something oddly adult about those eyes. He looked away, searching for something to do with his own gaze, which fell to Demir’s left hand. On the back of Demir’s hand were two triangles, drawn carefully in ink as he was not yet old enough for a tattoo. The triangles overlapped, one inverted, like a stylized hourglass. A glassdancer sigil. Demir was one of those sorcerers who could control glass with his mind?

Demir shoved his left hand into his pocket, glaring at Montego.

The carriage lurched to a stop. The driver opened their door, and Montego climbed out after his hosts to find himself staring up at the biggest building he’d ever seen. It was three stories of implacable white marble, windows marching for hundreds of feet in either direction. Purple flags with the cracked lightning sigil of the Grappo hung above the magnificent double doors. Servants in matching livery scurried down to meet the carriage, then milled uncertainly, as if wondering why Montego had no luggage.

“Welcome home,” Adriana said to him. “I apologize I don’t have more time to help you settle in, but there’s a very important vote coming up in the Assembly next week. I’ll leave you in the hands of Demir and my staff.” With that, she hurried up the steps and inside.

“There’s always an important vote coming up,” Demir said softly.

Montego clutched Grandma’s cudgel and stared. And stared some more. And just kept staring. This was a hotel? He’d pictured the common house and pub back at his home village, the footprint of which could rest easily on these front steps. Intimidating didn’t quite describe the building lying before him. He turned around, hoping for someone with which to share his wonder, but he only found the quiet Demir standing next to him, looking unimpressed.

“The Assembly buildings are bigger,” Demir said.

“I . . . how?” Montego asked.

“Architecture, I assume,” Demir yawned. “By the way, al’Bou is a provincial word meaning from the land. It just means you’re a peasant. It’s an insult, not a surname. Never use it again.” With that, he strode up the stairs, his right arm swinging freely and his left tucked under his jacket, as if to hide the glassdancer sigil on his hand.

Montego didn’t have time to wonder at the strange, sullen boy. The staff whisked him inside, and he was marched down several long halls, lectured on etiquette with every step, promised new clothes—and that they’d burn his old ones—before being deposited into an austere, characterless room. A smiling face told him they’d bring him dinner in an hour, and they closed the door.

Just like that, he’d been abandoned. Montego tried to take it all in. He tried to process the enormity of this place. When Grandma, croaking from her deathbed, ordered him to come to the capital, he wasn’t sure what to expect. An adventure, perhaps? But everything he’d seen made him feel small, and that was not something he was used to. Why did Grandma send him to this strange place? Why did she leave him so alone?

Trembling, Montego clutched Grandma’s cudgel to his breast, curled up on the end of his new bed, and allowed himself to weep.

2

It didn’t take long for Montego to realize that he’d been left entirely to his own devices. A tailor took his measurements and brought him dozens of new tunics of various cuts and styles, probably more clothing than his entire collected village owned back home. Academic books were left on the table in his bedroom—history, politics, mathematics. The lamps were lit and the washbasin changed by maids so quiet they didn’t wake him. A small purse with Ossan bank notes and copper coins was left on his pillow, and when Montego tried to return it to the porter who must have lost it, he was patiently told it was his allowance—pocket money for the street vendors.

Montego didn’t believe in fear—not when he helped on the fishing boats over deep water, nor when he ran up the tall semaphore tower to signal news to passing ships—but this overwhelming display of wealth was so casual that it stirred something cautious inside him. Wealth freely shared could be freely taken away. What was the catch? What did they want from him?

Tentative explorations on his second day in Ossa found the hotel open to him. The staff didn’t seem to care where he went as long as he was quiet and out from under foot. If he asked for something, they brought it. Otherwise they ignored him.

On his third day, Montego found Demir in a large corner suite on the second floor of the hotel. The boy sat cross-legged on a rug, surrounded by books, one massive tome in his lap and his head craned to read it. He didn’t look up when Montego entered, and Montego watched in amazement as Demir scanned the pages, flipping between them after a handful of moments. He finished the book, stared at the opposite wall for fifteen or twenty seconds, as if digesting what he’d read, then moved on to the next.

“Are you really reading everything on the page?” Montego asked, breaking the long silence.

“Yes.”

“How?”

Demir tapped his ear, as if that explained everything. Montego had to crane his head to see the purple teardrop earring hanging there. Witglass, a vibrant godglass that invigorated the mind. Grandma said that the most intelligent people could use powerful witglass to process a whole encyclopedia’s worth of information in an afternoon. Where Montego came from, the witglass wasn’t very good and what little they had was reserved for only the richest of the village elders. Here they gave it to a boy?

“Oh. Wow.”

“Has the staff seen to your needs?” Demir asked curtly.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Thank them. Or my mother.” Demir’s words were clipped, offhandedly rude, as if Montego were a distraction he tolerated.

“I haven’t seen her since I arrived.”

“She’s not around much. Too busy at the Assembly. If you need anything, go to the staff.”

“Oh. I . . .” Montego stuttered, trying to explain his confused thoughts.

“Yes?”

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. What’s expected of me.”

“Study,” Demir responded.

“And?”

The question seemed to take Demir off guard. He tilted his head curiously. “And what?”

“What else besides studying?”

“That’s all I do,” Demir told him.

Montego frowned. Grandma was quite strict on his studies—or at least he used to think of her as strict—but she’d also said it was important to work and play. To learn outside the classroom, she told him. “I don’t think I can spend all my time studying.”

“Then do what you want,” Demir said shortly. He turned his head back to his book, his eyes flying over the page.

Montego flexed his hands, feeling the powerful urge to do something with them. But what? The Grappo would surely be appalled if he tried to find work on a fishing boat or a semaphore tower. That was peasant work and, as Demir pointed out, he was suddenly no longer a peasant. He was the ward of rich, powerful people. He chewed on his thoughts, stifled by his limited options. He thought of his conversation with Adriana the other day. Grandma wanted him to get a good education. A safe job.

Adriana, he realized, had never actually forbidden him from cudgeling.

“I want to fight,” Montego said, though he was sure Demir wasn’t listening.

“The Melkist Arena lets kids watch,” Demir told him without looking up.

I want to fight, not watch, Montego almost said. He bit his tongue and nodded. “Thank you.”

“Hm,” Demir acknowledged with a little dismissive wave.

It was, Montego found, a far less intimidating city to navigate with a little bit of money in his pocket and a nicer tunic and jacket. A street vendor gave him directions when he stopped to buy figs and olives, and by the middle of the afternoon he was at the Melkist Arena. It wasn’t as big or grand of a building as the Hyacinth Hotel, but it was still larger than any amphitheater Montego had ever seen. It was built of stone instead of wood, with massive slate signs displaying the names of the fighters, dedicated vendor stalls, and a mighty podium for multiple judges and even an announcer.

Cudgeling was the national sport of the Empire, with arenas in every corner of the world, no matter how tiny or distant the village. Two fighters entered, clad only in girdles, wearing forgeglass to strengthen their bodies, each carrying a stout wooden stick with a bulbed end. They beat the absolute piss out of each other for the entertainment of the screaming crowds until one went unconscious or forfeited.

He used to watch cudgeling matches in their village all the time, but there was one memory that Montego held dear: a few years back, when she was still healthy, Grandma took him overland a hundred miles to visit a proper city, where they watched a fight between two former world champions. Grandma complained the whole time that both fighters were too old and too slow, but in Montego’s mind it was a battle between colossuses—the greatest thing he’d seen in his life.

Until now.

He took a seat in the big stone arena and leaned forward on his bench, watching carefully as the cudgelists sparred back and forth across the sand circle, their swings sometimes so fast it was difficult for the naked eye to follow them. He could immediately tell that the style here was different than he was used to—faster and more brutal, probably due to the better forgeglass. Within moments he was invested in two fighters he didn’t know, cheering with the crowd. His heart leapt with every slap of cudgel against flesh, and he winced sympathetically at savage blows and cursed at a fighter when they missed an easy block.

Something clicked over the course of the next few hours. This new style, with the better forgeglass and healthier fighters, wasn’t just exciting. It caused his whole body to tremble as if he were soaking in the thrill of the entire crowd. No fistfight with a fishmonger or storm on raging seas had ever been this exhilarating. Montego found his right arm waving involuntarily, mimicking the movements, and when a fighter finally went down and was dragged limp from the sand, Montego’s face was flush, blood pumping for the next match, and the next, and the next.

One fighter in particular interested him. He was called the Immortal Keloncoalt, and he was only sixteen years old and already famous—or so Montego understood from the chatter in the audience around him. Despite his age he was built like a brick wall, his oiled, light Purnian skin stretched over a heavily-muscled frame, five and a half feet tall with wide, powerful shoulders. Keloncoalt smashed his way through four consecutive fights, finishing each one with a terrible, brutal efficiency. His victories included one forfeit, two knockouts, and a death.

The crowd adored him, cheering with every strike.

When evening came, and the arena was emptied and cleaned for a political debate, Montego found himself drifting through the crowd with a sort of prophetic euphoria. Do what you want, Demir told him. He couldn’t fish, he couldn’t practice semaphore. But fight? No one told him he couldn’t fight. Cudgeling might be dangerous, but it was acceptable work for a guild-family ward. Even Montego knew that.

He waited in a back alley until the Immortal Keloncoalt—now bathed, heavily perfumed, and with a woman twice his age on his arm—emerged from the back exit of the arena.

“Keloncoalt,” he said, tugging at the fighter’s sleeve as he passed. Up close he was even bigger, arms nearly bursting out of his jacket sleeves, and for the first time in his life Montego didn’t feel like a freak. And Keloncoalt was only four years older than Montego!

Keloncoalt brushed him off without looking. “No signatures,” he said.

“Keloncoalt, I want to learn to fight like you. I want to be a cudgelist.”

“Ha!”

“Can you give me any advice?”

Keloncoalt didn’t stop walking, tugging his companion along with him. “Yeah, get out of my face if you want to live to see tomorrow.”

“I’m not in your face,” Montego said, letting himself fall behind. “I just want some advice.”

“You want some advice? Go back to the provinces and chop firewood like a good peasant. The capital is already too overcrowded with your kind.”

Montego stared, open-mouthed, as the fighter rounded the corner and disappeared. It was like someone had slapped him right across the face. He had no words for something like that. Stumbling around inside his own head, he finally managed to mumble, “Who pissed in your wine?”

“It’s the accent,” a voice came from behind him.

Montego turned to find a woman in her midthirties emerging from the arena’s back exit. She was much cleaned-up since her fights, but Montego remembered that she went by Charmin’ Charli, and she had won two matches and lost another two—one of which was her forfeit to Keloncoalt.

“You have the same accent,” Montego said.

“Yup. And Keloncoalt always goes for my knees. Best way to end a fighter’s career—cureglass struggles with the knees. Glassdamn, I hate fighting against him. Did you see that little silic sigil on his right hand?”

Montego hadn’t, but he nodded anyway.

“That means he was adopted by the Dorlani—that’s one of the biggest guild-families in Ossa. He can get away with glassdamn near anything. Where you from, kid?”

Montego thrust his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “Up north.”

“Where from?”

“A little town called Lastlul.”

“I’m from Hurlsburg,” Charli said with a little upward tilt of her chin. It was a small gesture, but a kind one—one provincial to another, a shared experience that made Montego feel a little less lonely.

Montego perked up. That was just a few villages over from where he grew up. “And you’re fighting in the capital?”

“Sure am. You want to be a cudgelist?”

“It’s in my blood. My grandma was Leapin’ Maggie Rica.”

Charli’s eyebrows climbed. “I know that name. My dad used to watch her fight. You’re kin, no joke?”

“No joke. I want to be like her. Cudgelists are the only people who are their own in the Empire,” Montego declared. “You’re the only people who look like me who aren’t commoners.”

Charli looked him up and down with a little chuckle. “You’re right about that second thing, kid,” she said, “but not the first. This is Ossa. Everyone owns and everyone is owned.”

Montego didn’t like that bit of information. No one would own him, he promised quietly to himself. To her he said, “How do I become a fighter?”

“Did your grandma teach you anything?”

Montego shook his head. “She didn’t want me fighting. But she’s dead now, and I need to do what’s in my blood.”

“No training. Hmm. You’re big enough, that’s for sure. How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Montego lied. It was a lie he’d gotten away with successfully for over a year now thanks to his size, and the fighter didn’t blink.

“You ever fought before at all?”

“Only with fists. I’m bigger, stronger, and faster than anyone my age.” It was a boast he could back up. Grandma always hated it when he came back home bloody and bruised, so he’d learned early not to let the others land a hit anywhere she would see.

“I’m sure you are,” she laughed. “You have a girdle, cudgel, and forgeglass?”

“I have Grandma’s cudgel.”

“How about a sponsor to get you a place on the fighting lists?”

“No.”

The fighter shook her head sympathetically. “You won’t get anywhere without those. Sorry, kid.” She ducked back inside the arena exit and returned a moment later with a bottle of wine, digging out the cork with a penknife. She took a swig. “I had a rich uncle leave me a little money. It was enough to hire a trainer and bribe the right people for a few fights. You need money and connections to get into the arena. Without those”—she shot him a sympathetic grimace—“good luck.” She headed down the alley alone, limping slightly.

Montego glared after her, wrestling with the sinking feeling of frustration in his belly. Was that it, then? To become a fighter he needed to find someone to sell himself to? The whole idea felt gross, pushing back at his desire to be a cudgelist—though not enough to kill it entirely.

“Hey kid!”

Montego turned to Charli paused on the street corner, her wine bottle raised to her lips. “You want to learn a thing or two? Go talk to Victor Orlain on Halfwit Street. He’s a classist asshole and will treat you like shit, but you might meet some useful people.”

Montego waved back in thanks, repeating the name to himself silently. Victor. He wanted to ask more, but Charli was already gone. Montego took a deep breath, putting Keloncoalt out of his mind. He could do this. He knew he could fight. All he needed was a chance to prove himself. Once he got in the arena, he wouldn’t need the Grappo, or Grandma, or anyone. He’d be his own man.

3

Montego entered a dilapidated old tenement in what one of the hotel staff had told him was the “bad” part of town early the next morning. He clutched Grandma’s cudgel under one arm to reassure himself, his fists clenched, as nervous as his first day on a new fishing boat. The tenement appeared all but abandoned, but he followed signs for VICTOR’S TRAINING scrawled directly on the walls through a maze of hallways until he heard the familiar rapping of cudgel on cudgel and the sound of people talking.

The hall let out into a long, narrow courtyard deep within the tenement. It wasn’t much—makeshift seats along one wall, a pile of heavily used cudgels by the door, and at the far end a small sand pit where two older boys, maybe in their late teens, hammered away at each other while a squat, overweight man with light Purnian skin fanned himself gently and occasionally shouted some bit of advice at the kids.

There were a handful of other people, all teens of various ages, loitering around the courtyard. No one wore cudgeling girdles or made any attempt to seem official in any way. Montego frowned, wondering if Charmin’ Charli had played a joke on him.

Then again, she hadn’t claimed this Victor was going to make him a fighter. Just that Victor would teach him a thing or two.

Most of the kids ignored him, but Montego found a girl about his age near the door watching him with thin pursed lips and raised eyebrows, wearing a little smile like she knew something that he did not. She was small—everyone was small to him—but sturdy, with a thin face, long black hair shaved on the sides, and a stiletto that she flipped casually from hilt to blade and back again as she watched him. She was dressed better than the other kids, in a lightly embroidered green tunic, and on the back of her right hand was an inked drawing of a sigil of a sun rising within the inverted triangle.

“Hello,” Montego said.

“Hello yourself,” she answered.

“I’m here to learn to be a cudgelist,” Montego told her.

She waggled her eyebrows at him. “New, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Does Victor know you’re coming?”

Montego shook his head.

The girl looked toward the fat man on the other side of the courtyard and shouted, “Hey Victor! Somebody sent you another stray!”

Victor acknowledged her with the flip of his fan but continued watching the older boys fight. Montego stepped sidelong toward the girl. “Are you a guild-family member?” he asked.

She glanced dismissively at the drawing on the back of her hand. “Kissandra Vorcien,” she said. “Call me Kizzie.”

“I’m Montego.” He remembered what Demir had said and bit off his last name. “Shouldn’t you be studying?”

“What, for the school year?” Kizzie scoffed. “Nah. I’m a bastard. Fewer privileges, fewer responsibilities. They give me an education but only care that I graduate. No need for good marks here.” She flipped her stiletto and caught it expertly by the blade between two fingers.

“Are you learning to be a cudgelist?”

“Nope. I just like to watch those idiots bash each other to pieces.”

Montego glanced across the courtyard to the two boys in the makeshift arena. They were both sweaty and tired, bodies sagging, bruised and bloody everywhere but their faces. Victor egged them on, insisting they keep fighting even though to Montego’s untrained eye they looked spent.

“Does Victor know what he’s doing?” he asked quietly.

Kizzie giggled at the question. “Yeah, I suppose. He was a silver-circuit contender before he broke his leg. It set wrong and he could never afford the surgery and cureglass to reset it. If he takes you on and he likes you, he’ll teach you a little and introduce you to sponsors.”

Sponsors. Someone else to share the glory. And the expenses. Montego hated the idea, but it sure sounded like the way things worked around here. He turned to ask Kizzie another question, but one of the boys suddenly collapsed and Victor let out an overly loud exasperated sigh. He didn’t look twice at the fallen boy, instead hauling himself to his feet and limping across the courtyard, where he gave Montego a once-over.

“Who the piss are you?” Victor demanded in a gravelly voice.

Montego held himself to his full height, a good few inches taller than Victor. “Montego, sir.”

“Sir,” Victor scoffed. “Sir. You hear that, Kizzie? He called me sir. Got his manners the same place he got his accent, I’d wager. How long have you been in the capital, boy?”

“Four days, sir.”

Victor scoffed again, shooting Kizzie a mocking glance. Kizzie shrugged and leaned back, as if she was about to enjoy a show. “Who sent you?”

“Charmin’ Charli,” Montego answered.

“Hm,” Victor snorted. “Charli. Good lady, that Charli.”

“She said you could teach me a thing or two.”

“Might could. Might could. Why should I?”

Montego blinked back at the man. That seemed like a pretty stupid question, but he answered it as honestly as he could. “Because I want to be a fighter. My grandma was Leapin’ Maggie Rica.”

“Never heard of her,” Victor said, gesturing for Montego to hand over the cudgel in his hands. Montego did so reluctantly, watching as Victor looked it over with a critical eye. “This hers?”

“Yeah.”

“This is made of Kashti Buloke. Fine wood. She had good taste in cudgels. I’ll give you three hundred ozzo for it.”

“It’s not for sale,” Montego said, snatching the cudgel back from Victor. The cudgelist grinned at him.

“Fine, fine. How much are you ready to pay for my services?”

The question caught Montego off guard, and he cursed himself that it did. Nothing was free, of course. Not out in the provinces, and definitely not in Ossa. At the hesitation, Victor rolled his eyes.

“Ugh. Another charity case.”

Montego dug in his pockets for the coins of his daily allowance. What had felt like a fortune a few days ago now looked like a paltry sum against Victor’s cocked eyebrow. “I can pay this. Each day.”

“So a charity case,” Victor repeated flatly. “I’ll train you three days for that cudgel.”

“It’s not for sale or trade. I’ll work to earn your training,” Montego insisted. “I can clean the cudgels and sand, help you with anything you need.”

“I’ve already got charity cases. Besides, you’re too young.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“No you’re not. Not the right build for sixteen. Big as a warhorse, I’ll give you that, but I bet you’re no older than Kizzie here. You look soft too.”

“I’m not soft.” Montego felt a little nudge at his temper—the slightest flicker of indignity deep in his belly. “I’ve been helping on fishing boats since I was six. I can take the pain of a hook in the hand better than any weathered fisherman. Nothing can knock me out, not even a boom to the face on a windy day. I can pull lines, and I can run up a semaphore tower faster than anyone in the Hestis Province.” He showed Victor his callused hands. “I’m not soft,” he repeated.

“Fishing boats and semaphore towers don’t make a fighter,” Victor snorted. “You’re too young. Come back in a few years and maybe we’ll talk.”

Montego opened his mouth to protest, but it was Kizzie who spoke. “Oh, come on, Victor. He found you, didn’t he? At least see if he can swing that cudgel.”

“Can you?” Victor asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure.”

Victor scoffed again. “That’s not a yes. Haven’t ever swung a cudgel, have you? You ever even taken a beating, soft kid?”

Montego could feel his temper heating up. Not too much—just a stewing cauldron of uncertainty and indignity layered over itself these last couple months since Grandma’s death. He’d never been quick to anger, nor cared much for those who were. Grandma always said he was a slow burn. She said slow burns were the hottest.

“I’ve given more beatings than I’ve taken,” he said stubbornly.

“Oh, oh,” Victor laughed. “So he says. All right, big soft kid. Lift that cudgel of yours. Hey, Sama!” he shouted across the courtyard. “Come here!” To Montego he said, “Go stand in the sand there and try to keep Sama from hitting you.”

Until that moment, Montego was by far the biggest person in the courtyard. In from the opposite doorway, however, ducked a thick-necked bruiser who must have been over six feet tall and almost as heavy as Montego. He had dark skin, a short black beard, and straight black hair that fell over his shoulders. He wore a proper cudgeling girdle, and his body was oiled like a fighter going into the ring.

That was not a kid. He was at least twenty, maybe older.

“Sama? Really?” Kizzie said.

“He wants to learn, he has to earn it,” Victor insisted.

Montego squared his shoulders and marched over to the sand pit, taking up a position on one side like he’d watched the cudgelists do in the arena his whole life. He held Grandma’s cudgel tightly in one hand, faced his opponent, and opened his mouth to tell Sama that he was ready.

Before the words were even out of his mouth Sama’s cudgel swung fast and powerfully over his own, the weighted bulb hitting Montego in the jaw hard enough to swing him around and plant him facedown on the ground. Montego’s vision was black for a moment, his head spun, his ears rang with the sound of Victor’s braying laughter, Sama’s dark chuckles, and Kizzie’s irritated swearing.

It hurt. It hurt bad. But not nearly as bad as the laughter.

“You mean pisser,” Kizzie said. “Don’t you always say never to the face? You just broke the kid’s jaw, he . . .”

Montego spat out foul-tasting sand, planted his hands beneath him, and climbed to his feet. He blinked the stars from his eyes and squared his shoulders once more. “Again,” he growled. Sama’s chuckle trailed off. He leapt forward, swinging at Montego’s head. Montego caught the blow across his cudgel, and his hand went numb.

He caught two more before Victor barked out, “Not the head!”

Sama lowered his attack, and Montego was suddenly beset by a flurry of blows, smashing him about his shoulders, arms, and thighs, a merciless barrage that rattled him to his very core. The cudgel fell from his fingers and a final strike across his left shoulder drove him out of the little arena and tripping backward onto the gravel. Sama backed off, leaving Montego red-faced on his ass.

Victor continued to laugh through the entire thing, a braying sound that grated on Montego’s bruised ego like a fish knife across bone. When Victor finally caught his breath he said, “Not even a hint of technique.”

“I can learn!” Montego insisted, climbing to his feet and shaking out both hands. He hurt all over, but it didn’t bother him. Pain was just part of life.

“You hold it like a semaphore flag,” Victor said. “Semaphore won’t help you in the arena, boy. Too stiff. Too high. I can’t undo that kind of mental conditioning. You’re a lost cause.”

“Please,” Montego said.

“Go on, get out of here.” Victor jerked his head back the way Montego had come. “I’m not gonna waste my time.”

Montego refused to move. He didn’t know if there were other people like Victor—trainers who could give him a chance, maybe help him learn—but in this moment it felt like his only opportunity, and a deep-rooted stubbornness took hold. None of the blows to his body hurt as much as the idea that no one would let him fight—to become his own man. Next to the pain of that thought, he barely felt them. “No. Teach me. I’ll work for it. I promise.”

“Sama, kick him out,” Victor said, no trace of laughter left in his voice.

Montego met the big fighter’s gaze and shook his head. Sama rolled his eyes. “Don’t make me hurt you for real, boy.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You’re making a fool out of yourself in front of everyone,” Victor said. “In front of Kizzie. You want to look a fool in front of a real guild-family bastard? Sama, get rid of him.”

Sama shrugged. “This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me,” he said, and swung his cudgel at Montego’s head once more.

Montego ducked. It was pure instinct, the tightness of holding a cudgel gone from his body. He slid fluidly beneath the swing of his opponent like it was a shifting boom on a sailboat and came up with all his weight behind his right fist. His knuckles connected with Sama’s nose with a crunching sound. The big fighter simply dropped. Montego was suddenly aware of the silence in the courtyard as all the young cudgelists stared at the pile of Sama at his feet.

The silence was broken by a howl of laughter. Kizzie rocked back on her seat, clutching her chest, giggling so hard that tears ran down her cheeks. She pointed at Sama, trying to squeak out something intelligible until she finally managed, “Did you see that? Come on, Victor. You gotta give him something!”

Victor stared down in disgust at Sama, then finally met Montego’s gaze.

“Sorry,” Montego said, “but I really want to learn.”

“Fine. You’re strong and can take a hit. Useless as a fighter, but I can use you to train the others. You can come let the other kids hit you. No fighting back, not with your damned semaphore arms. If you learn something in the process . . .” He shrugged.

Montego glanced across at Kizzie, who continued with fits of giggles, wiping tears out of her eyes. She gave him that knowing little smile and winked. “Good luck.” She hopped to her feet. “I gotta go do some studying, but I guess I’ll see ya around.”

Montego hoped so.

4

Montego fell into the comfort of routine in this strange new place. Every morning he spent an hour flipping through the academic books left on his bedroom table, trying to conceptualize the sheer volume of information they seemed to expect him to know for the academy. Every time he became overwhelmed by his handful of books, he tried to picture the piles and piles in Demir’s rooms.

It didn’t help.

The expectations were clearly different for the Grappo heir than they were for the provincial ward. Maybe that’s what made Demir so sullen. Montego never saw him play or laugh. When they passed in the hotel hall or in the restaurant, Demir returned any word of greeting with a curt nod, his eyes focused on something only he could see, his lips moving silently in memorization. Montego tried to emulate the effort and even used the little piece of purple witglass that was left for him. It only made his head hurt and his skin itch under his arms.

After an attempt at studying each day, Montego simply left the hotel. No one seemed to care that much about his comings and goings. He made his way to Victor’s little training yard, where the ex-fighter used Montego like a human training dummy. The older kids beat on Montego, slapping him hither and thither with the bulbed ends of their cudgels while Victor droned on.

Montego ignored his physical discomfort the way the fishermen taught him to when he was a little boy out on the cold seas. He crawled deep into his own head, barely aware of the pain, shifting all his faculties to his eyes and his ears. He watched the way the other kids moved, from their cudgels to their footwork. He listened carefully to every word out of Victor’s mouth.

Awareness, Victor stressed. Know yourself. Know your opponent. Know the judges and the crowd. Know your location within the arena and in relation to the other fighter at all times. If your opponent is faster or smaller, move in to grapple them, holding your cudgel like a two-handed stave. If your opponent is slower or heavier, tire them out with light, quick-footed movement, your cudgel used more like a fencer might use his small sword.

Aim strikes to the thighs and shoulders to slow their movements. Hit them in the groin or stomach to snatch away their breath. Avoid the head and joints even if the judges will allow it, for your opponents won’t hesitate to fight dirty in return. Montego had to bite his tongue when Victor explained this, resisting the urge to point out his own beating from Sama the first day.

It was raining buckets on the seventh day of his “training”—ten since his arrival in Ossa. Montego was soaked through by the time he reached the courtyard in the center of the slum and was surprised to find it empty. No sign of the older kids, or Victor, or Kizzie. The sand pit was a disgusting slurry, the cudgels still stacked off in one corner.

Montego hung around for a while, waiting for someone to show up. When no one did, he lifted Grandma’s cudgel to practice the forms that Victor showed the other kids. Shake off the stiffness. Bend at the elbow. Rotate the wrist. He had to stop thinking of the cudgel like a semaphore flag in his hand, no matter how familiar it felt. No, this was more like fishing. He had to move like he was on the deck of a boat with the nets or the ropes or a rod in his hand.

He shifted constantly, imagining the pitching of the deck on a rough day. He was moving, though, not the sea.

He danced back and forth across the entire courtyard, swinging the cudgel at an imaginary opponent fixed in his mind’s eye. Strike, strike, block. Feint low. Strike the middle. Slide backward. Slide again. Shift to the right. A quick swing that he’ll never see coming. He could hear the cheering of the crowd in his ears, like that day so long ago with Grandma when they watched the former world champions slog it out across a provincial arena.

There was more space to move around here than in his room at the Hyacinth. He could lunge and pivot easily, swinging freely. The imaginary fight seemed to pull something from him—bringing the anger and grief at Grandma’s death to his fingertips, giving it all action and purpose. For these lingering moments the loneliness seemed to shrink away. He felt alive, his heart full.

He did not stop until sweat and rain made the cudgel nearly impossible to grip. His arms sagged from unpracticed exertion. This was what he would do. It had to be. It was the only thing that made sense.

Tired and soaked, he turned to leave the little courtyard and was surprised to find Kizzie in the entry, leaning casually against the unframed wall. He felt his wet cheeks grow hot.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey back,” she replied.

“I, uh, was late. Just got here.”

“Yeah? Me too.” Kizzie’s returning stare was cool and neutral, but Montego thought he detected an amused twinkle in her eye. He tried to ignore it. Surely she hadn’t seen him dancing all about like a fool? If she had, she no doubt would have told him. And Victor and everyone else would know by the end of the day tomorrow. “They don’t practice when it rains, by the way.”

“Gotcha. So why are you here?”

Kizzie kicked at the dirty, cracked tile floor. “Not a lot to do when it rains. Whole city sits on their thumbs like they’ve never seen bad weather before. But with all the talk you make about sailing, I figured you’d be here.”

Montego felt a little tug at the corner of his mouth, his mortification fading. “You actually listened?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Nobody ever listens. They use me for my strength and speed and size, but ignore me when I’m not needed.”

Kizzie shrugged. “That’s all of us though, isn’t it? Kids, I mean. At least kids who aren’t guild-family members.”

Montego wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not. “I thought you were a guild-family member.”

“That’s what guys like Victor say,” Kizzie said with a dismissive wave, “but it’s complicated. I’m allowed to use the family name, but I’m not actually a member. Complex privileges and all that. I don’t know. I don’t like to talk about it.” She sniffed, bending over to squeeze some of the rain from her black hair. She flipped it back up and back, then adjusted a tiny strand that clung to her forehead. There was something about the casual confidence about that move that Montego really liked.

“You ever seen a dead body?” she asked.

Montego lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“Want to see another?”

He didn’t, particularly, but it was an invitation to spend time with her. “Yeah.”

5

“You’re really a Grappo ward, huh?” Kizzie asked as they picked their way along the massive ditches, brimming with water, thundering down into the Tien River below them. Montego had to strain to hear her over the sound, and he was surprised at how boldly she skipped along the narrow stone catwalks, one bad slip away from being carried away by the current. “So you know Demir and Adriana.”

“I wouldn’t say I know them,” Montego answered. How many times had he spoken to Demir? He could count on one hand the number of responses that weren’t grunts. After the initial day with Adriana, he’d only had dinner with her once, and it was a silent hour of rich food in the hotel restaurant while she pored over stacks of official-looking documents. “I don’t think Demir likes me.”

Kizzie reached the end of a stone catwalk and hopped down to a patch of bare dirt below. Montego found himself eager to impress, walking a little faster than he might have, his footing unsteady. He used Grandma’s cudgel to help him keep his balance, and he managed to join Kizzie without falling to his own demise. They were below a busy street but above the river, at eye level with the rushing water of the culvert emptying into the mud-churned waters.

Kizzie leaned forward to yell in his ear. “Don’t take it personally. Demir doesn’t like anyone these days.”

“These days?” Montego echoed.

“Yeah. He used to be the most fun in the city. Always skipping class and sneaking out at night. He once . . .” She paused, her whole face lighting up at some memory, laughing as she spoke, “He once organized a raid on old Christoph Page’s candy store over by Waterside Park. Twenty kids fell on that place like it was a provincial fortress. We went through doors, windows, even had a couple of us come in through the roof. Cleaned the whole place out in broad daylight and not one of us got caught.”

“No,” Montego denied in disbelief. He was no thief, but he knew plenty of fishermen who moonlighted as highwaymen or petty pickpockets in bigger cities during the off-season. They always claimed you couldn’t trust anyone but yourself, that the bigger the crew, the more likely the provincial army would kick in your door. With twenty kids someone must have squealed. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true!” Kizzie declared. She looked around as if to make sure they were alone and then said conspiratorially, “Best part is he arranged the whole thing with old Christoph. All those kids thought they were part of some big, exciting crime. It was all paid for ahead of time. Just a big illusion for an afternoon of fun. Nobody knows but me and Christoph, and you”—she poked Montego hard in the belly—“better keep your lips sealed. Demir may have turned all moody, but he’s still a good little squirt. I don’t want anything damaging his reputation.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” Montego promised. “But how do you know?”

Kizzie circled around the little overlook with a confident swagger, throwing her arms out to either side. “Because I was his right-hand woman. Gotta keep someone in your confidence, don’t ya? Hey, look over there!”

Montego had a dozen questions, but they were snatched from his mind by Kizzie pointing over and down, to a second set of culverts perhaps a hundred yards farther along the river. These ones weren’t as violent. They deposited their contents into the river from no great height, and the flow was broken up by boulders that seemed to be there for that very purpose. Caught in an eddy behind one such boulder was a snatch of bright color bobbing up and down.

“Come on,” Kizzie told him, scampering along a narrow ribbon of stone that ducked beneath the culvert. Montego barely fit, but he found himself twisting and balancing his way after her, caution thrown to the wind, the powerful flow of water just inches from his head. Once out the other side, Kizzie led him down a precarious series of reinforced wall faces, sometimes hopping between half-rotten wooden beams that couldn’t possibly hold his weight, until they made it down to the muddy riverside. A series of planks, partially submerged by the floodwaters and probably put there by scavengers or musselmen, provided an easier highway to their destination.

The bit of color caught in the eddy was a cloak of some kind, and it was definitely attached to a body. Montego caught glimpses of pale skin rolling in the foam. Kizzie snatched a passing stick out of the floodwaters, but the body was too far out of reach to give it a good poke. Montego tried with his longer arms. Still too far.

“Where have you seen a body?” Kizzie asked.

Montego shifted uncomfortably. He’d always thought of life in the capital as some kind of fantasy land—safe and warm and comfortable, isolated from the hardships of the provinces. That’s certainly what all the adults said. But there was a corpse right there, and nobody passing on the road above them seemed even the slightest bit concerned.

“Watched an old pearl diver drown during a storm when I was eight,” Montego answered thoughtfully. He knew it had happened but the memory wasn’t really there—just a vague sense of the facts. “A few cudgelists in the arena. Sometimes bodies wash up on the beach. I saw Dad when the plague took him, but I was just a little boy. And Grandma, of course.”

“The plague?” Kizzie echoed. “I thought the plague was easy to fight with cureglass.”

“If you can get it. The village couldn’t afford anything decent, and even after we reported the outbreak, it took a couple weeks for a doctor to arrive with medicine and good cureglass.” Montego shrugged. That memory was closer, but like his mother’s death it was still so distant that he could barely find it in the cobwebs of his memory. “Dad was gone before they arrived. How about you? You see a lot of bodies?”

“Oh, yeah. In the river, usually. Bloated and gross. They fish them out down by the Grent border. Sometimes they get stuck on the shoreline and the national guard doesn’t remove them for a few days. They stink.” Kizzie screwed up her nose and threw the stick back into the floodwaters. “I watched one of my brothers kill a guy once. It was a duel. The other guy didn’t stand a chance. You think you could kill someone?”

Montego glanced sidelong to find her watching him. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Yeah. My father says I’ll have to kill someday. He says to enjoy my innocence, whatever that means. Aw, shit.” Montego followed her gaze to the street above them. A young woman stood up there, waving both arms, shouting something that was swallowed by the crash of rushing water. She wore a light-blue tunic that matched Kizzie’s, though was clearly of lower quality. “One of my family servants,” Kizzie sighed. She waved an affirmative back and began to climb. Montego accompanied her to the street.

“You want to play again some time?” he asked as she began to walk away.

She shot a glance over her shoulder. “Yeah. This weekend. I’ll come find you.”

6

Montego waited outside Demir’s corner suite in the hotel, listening to a heated argument between Demir and one of his tutors. It had gone on for some time now, loud enough to be heard from two halls over, and by the smirks of the hotel staff as they passed, Montego gathered this was not a unique situation. Nobody attempted to stop the argument nor scolded Montego for listening, so he leaned against the wall with hands in his pockets waiting for it to end.

“. . . but if proper political pressure is put into place there will be no need of military force!” Demir insisted.

“That’s idealistic and you know it. Sometimes military intervention is necessary. Period,” came the strangled reply from a middle-aged woman clearly at the end of her wits.

“I refuse to believe that. You’re talking about a first strike—invasion without warning. Such war is the first resort of fools and demons.”

“Don’t you quote sixth-century Nasuudian philosophers at me, young man! Ostilia tried his peaceful approach and got his head chopped off by a warlord scheming right under his nose. If he’d turned his loyal forces against that warlord, he might have lived. You’re proving my point.”

“Ostilia can be right and a fool at the same time. He did not apply his own advice to the people close to him. There was no need to start a civil war. The warlord might have been bought off, exiled, coerced, isolated, or even quietly assassinated. War only widens the scope of suffering. Political solutions, even at their most violent, are always preferable to war.”

They’d been going around in circles like this for so long that Montego no longer understood a single reference point. The woman was an officer of some kind. He had the impression they knew each other quite well.

“You,” she responded, “are as big a damned fool as Ostilia. I can’t deal with your optimism today. Memorize the dossiers of the provincial army commanders, brigades eighteen through fifty-three, by tomorrow morning.”

The door opened and a dark-skinned woman in a black Foreign Legion uniform strode out. She was a couple inches shorter than Montego, stout without being fat. He felt himself reflexively shy away from her. Strange. Why would he feel intimidated? It certainly wasn’t in her build. Her bearing, perhaps, or her eyes—hard, striking brown, like the shine of a gallo turtle shell. She shot him a long, cool glance. Not past him, like most adults, but truly at him. Like she could see into his very thoughts.

“Interesting,” she said, and strode away.

Montego found himself joined immediately by Demir, and they both watched her walk away. Demir’s lips were pursed, his cheeks flushed, as if he’d been dueling with a worthy opponent.

“That’s General Maj Madaloc,” he said. “Few people know it, but she’s already one of the most dangerous people in the Empire. The Assembly will make her field marshal one day. I have no idea what my mother holds over her to convince her to tutor me. She hates my guts. Always has.” Demir sighed, then added, “I like her daughters, though. They’re much kinder than their mother.”

Montego screwed up his nose and stared in the direction of the now-departed general. “Why would she hate you? You’re just a kid.”

“Because I defy her by disagreeing with her. She thinks I’m frivolous, wasting my life on politics and helping people. She wants me to be her protégé. Groomed for the highest military leadership under her tutelage. I . . . do not want that.”

It all sounded so adult. Certainly well beyond any ten-year-old, but it was clear by now that Demir was no ordinary child. Montego thought about this for a very long time. “One of our village elders had a son-in-law he wanted to take over his copper mine. It was a generous offer, but his son-in-law refused. Said mining wasn’t in his blood. It caused a big scandal, with the elders mad at the youth. It’s kind of like that, right? Except bigger stakes.”

Demir peered at him keenly. “Exactly like that. What would you do, in my situation?”

Montego considered his answer. “Which thing are you better at?”

“Hard to say. I’m still a boy. I may grow into one or the other. Mother tells me I have an affinity for both. She wants me to follow her into politics, but she won’t stop me if I head into the military.”

He really did speak like a tiny adult. Montego asked, “Which do you like?”

“I like people, Montego. I like to talk to them, not to murder them.” As he spoke, Montego noticed that he hid his left hand slightly behind him. To conceal the glassdancer sigil.

“I don’t mind hurting people,” Montego said truthfully, “but I don’t think others should be forced to do so. Become a politician. Make a good difference in the world.” He shifted from foot to foot, wondering how long he’d wasted listening to that argument. “Hey, I know you’re very busy, but do you want to come to the Family District with me and Kizzie? We’re going to explore an abandoned mansion.”

For the briefest moment, Demir’s face lit up. The difference was night and day—no remnant of the sullen boy—shining delight and mischief in a way that immediately convinced Montego of Kizzie’s story about the candy store robbery.

The smile faded, though not completely, and Demir said, “I have a lot of commanders to memorize today, or Maj will thrash me raw tomorrow. Thank you for inviting me.” He turned away, paused, and said, “You should study.”

“I’ve been trying to.”

“You should study more.”

“I don’t like it. I want to be a cudgelist.”

“But you should still study. Not like me. But more than you are. Also, don’t let mother see you with all those bruises. She’ll ask questions. I’ll leave a bit of cureglass in your bedroom tonight.” With that, he shut the bedroom door in Montego’s face.

What a strange kid.

Montego met Kizzie north of the river. The roads here were wider, less trafficked, with smooth cobbles and regular street lamps. Immense houses sat back behind thickets of ancient trees, affording glimpses of gold and marble, wealth that Kizzie assured him outstripped the Grappo the same way the Hyacinth Hotel towered over Montego’s village back home. It all felt very intimidating—pushing the vague sense that Montego didn’t belong here, and everyone knew it. He found himself walking in Kizzie’s shadow, shoulders hunched, not making eye contact with those who passed.

They descended the other side of Family Hill and took a shortcut through a dense grove of thousand-year-old trees, their roots a tantalizing maze through which Kizzie ducked with the same familiarity Montego might have used to navigate the rigging of a large fishing boat. For the most part, he was too big to follow.

It was fun to watch her, though. She seemed in her element, without airs or self-consciousness.

They paused on the other side of the grove, resting on a little bench made from a gnarled, living root.

“I told you Demir wouldn’t come,” Kizzie said. Montego realized it was the first time they’d spoken in some time. Words hadn’t really felt needed.

“I don’t think it’s really his choice,” Montego replied, staring up into the canopy above them. It was so peaceful here, hard to believe they were a stone’s throw from the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world. If he listened carefully he could hear the distant thunder of carriages rumbling on cobbles.

“I guess,” Kizzie said uncertainly. “He’s always been a bookworm, but he’s gotten worse lately. I stopped inviting him to play because he never comes out.” She sniffed indignantly, as if Demir had slighted her personally. In a way, Montego supposed, he had. “Maj always runs him ragged. She’s worse than his mom. I’m sure glad I don’t have a military tutor.” She plucked a twig from a hanging branch and snapped it in half. “My dad says geniuses have the most responsibilities. He says Demir is going to run the country someday.”

Montego tried to imagine the sullen, almost fragile-looking boy in charge of a village, let alone a whole nation. It didn’t fit. He could see Demir running a library, maybe, like the little room of books the widows and widowers in his village used to keep.

“You like him,” Montego probed.

“Of course I like him. He’s my friend.” Kizzie cocked an eyebrow at him, then seemed to read something in his face because she barked out a laugh. “Not like that! Funny little squirt. He’s like my little brother. He’s better to me than any of my real siblings.” She paused, then added, “And he’s too small. I like taller boys.”

Montego felt his cheeks warm, but managed to smile back at her. “Good to know.” He thought for a moment, suddenly feeling a little tongue-tied. “I think Demir is afraid,” Montego ventured.

“Demir? No way. He’s not afraid of anything, otherwise we wouldn’t let him play with us older kids. Come on, let’s go find the old Herlo place.”

Montego allowed Kizzie to lead him along the path, down and out of the wood and onto the cobbles, where more mansions—smaller than the ones on Family Hill, but still impossibly huge—marched along wide boulevards. He felt like a lumbering oaf behind her scampering, agile recklessness. They reached a stone wall that pressed up against the road. It was in obvious disrepair, and they soon came upon a split in the upper stones.

“Can you climb that?” Kizzie asked.

She might as well have demanded a fish to swim. Montego set his fingers, found some toe-holds, and was on top of the wall in a moment. He lifted Kizzie with one arm, enjoying the way she laughed as he lowered her down the other side. A well-worn path took them through the brambles. Montego caught glimpses of a grand house through the thicket, worn and crumbling.

“The Herlo were the last surviving branch of the Zorlian guild-family,” Kizzie said. “They used to own half of Ossa. Now the only scion has fled his debts. The debt collectors have picked over the place for all the good stuff, but I thought we could have a look. Never know what we might find hidden away.”

Montego paused as they came out of the thicket, staring up at four stories of crumbling plaster over stone. It was a haunting vision, spearing the morning mist. The occasional drape fluttered from open windows. Doubts assailed him—surely a guard must be placed on such a grand house. They would be found and punished, and his hosts would be ashamed of him. Those doubts disappeared with Kizzie’s mischievous smile.

“Split whatever loot we can find?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, and as if by silent agreement they both ran for the closest door. Inside, the kitchens smelled of stale flour and something rotten, and it was beset by thick swarms of flies. Tables lay on their sides, crates were destroyed, straw and firewood had been tossed on the floor. Someone searching for hidden valuables, perhaps? The imagination fluttered. Pushing into the dining hall, they found the wreckage of a once-great table, and a painting over the fireplace of some noble lady had been slashed and vandalized with one word written in crimson: poor.

Montego stared at the portrait. “Is that the greatest sin in Ossa?” he asked. “To not have money?”

Kizzie didn’t seem bothered by the question, poking a stick into the back of a wrecked cabinet. Shards of what had once been fine porcelain spilled out. “No doubt.”

“Will you always have money?” Montego asked. “Being a bastard and all.”

Kizzie’s mirth faltered. “I don’t know. My half brother Aldis—he’s the only decent one—tells me I should have backup plans. That I can’t depend on Father. But Father says as long as I graduate university, he’ll give me some foreign asset to oversee. He likes to spread his bastards around to be useful to him. He’s got enough of us. How about you? What do the Grappo have in store for you?”

As they spoke, they moved into the grand hall. It was a cavernous space, taller than the foyer of the Hyacinth but not as wide. Overlapping staircases reached all the way to the top of the house. A gaping hole allowed sunlight and birds in through the ceiling directly above them. The center of the room was rotted through, revealing rafters and a shadowy basement below.

“I don’t know either,” Montego answered, listening to his voice echo. “Grandma didn’t want me to be a cudgelist. Adriana and Demir both told me to study. But what does studying lead to?”

“Boredom,” Kizzie answered earnestly.

Montego laughed. It was so strange, having a friend his own age. The kids back in the village always avoided him because he was too big and worked with the adults. Kizzie didn’t seem to mind, well, anything about him.

“Maybe they’ll grow sick of me and send me back to the provinces.”

“Nah. Adriana always keeps her promises. She’ll raise you right.”

“Then maybe I’ll come work on whatever holding your father has you oversee,” Montego suggested.

“I’d like that!” Kizzie snatched up a broken shard of banister and brandished it like a cudgel. “Or maybe we strike out on our own—the bastard and the ward! We’ll be pirates and highwaymen and whenever we’re down on our luck we’ll come sleep in Demir’s cellar and drink his wine.”

Montego found his own stick—the leg from a broken chair—and crossed it with hers. “En garde, Lady Vorcien,” Montego said. The clack of wood on wood resounded throughout the broken manor as they dueled across the great hall. It was a mimicry of war, sometimes a cudgel match, sometimes fencing. They ranged up the stairs to the second floor, then the third. Kizzie cackled and scurried across an exposed rafter to put a big hole between them.

“Ah-ha!” she declared. “Too fast for you!”

Montego discarded his chair leg sword, took a running jump, and leapt the whole chasm. He knew it was a mistake the moment his boot touched wood on the other side—it went right through, his momentum arrested, and he fell forward and caught himself with his hands. He looked up to find Kizzie ashen faced.

“Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing him by the arm. With her help he yanked his leg out of the hole, stumbled, and took them both down into a pile of giggles.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Montego said when they caught their breath. They lay inches from the edge of the floor, looking down through a shattered banister to the great hall spread out beneath them. They both stared at the cavernous sight for a few moments before breaking out in laughter again.

“How did you not break your leg?” Kizzie asked.

Montego checked for damage. Some scrapes that would throb for a day or two, but nothing bad. “Eh, I don’t ever really get hurt bad. Grandma says it’s the elder blood in me.”

“Elder blood, huh?” Kizzie asked, snorting a laugh.

“That’s what she always said! She liked to say I was born of the sea and that nothing could break me.”

“You provincials believe the weirdest things.”

“Right? Grandma was wrong, anyhow. She said the same thing about my mother, but a bullet killed her.”

Kizzie frowned. “Sorry. I’ve never met my mom.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. My dad’s wife calls her that Purnian hussy whore. That’s the only name I know. The only kinds of names allowed for any of the mothers of his bastards.”

“Sorry,” Montego said. They shared a quiet moment that felt . . . kind. A sort of shared understanding. “Thanks for being my friend,” he said impulsively.

Kizzie smiled. “No problem. I like you. I’m glad Adriana took you in. My father calls her the last truly good-hearted person in Ossa, but he always says it as an insult.”

“That’s a dumb insult,” Montego said honestly.

“Yeah. Adriana’s always busy, but she’s nice to me when I come around the hotel. She’s even protected me from Sibrial a few times, and nobody stands up to Sibrial! That’s my oldest half brother. He’s a mean shithead.” Kizzie stared off at nothing for a few moments and added, “I am sad that Demir didn’t come. He’d love this place. I think if you get to know him, you’re going to like him.”

“I don’t dislike him.” Montego shrugged. “I just have never really gotten to talk or play with him.”

“We’ll get him away from Maj and the other tutors this fall,” Kizzie promised.

Montego pictured the way Demir’s face lit up earlier. There was a lot of fun in that face. “I’d like that.”

“Good. We’ve got to watch out for that squirt. He’s so small and defenseless.”

“Except for the glassdancing,” Montego reminded her.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t like hurting people.”

Montego considered that for the moment. Demir had told him the same thing. “I think that’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“That’s why he got all sullen. He doesn’t like hurting people, and then he’s told he has this sorcery that’s only good for killing people.”

Kizzie tilted her head, considering. “But why would he just stop playing with us?”

Montego rolled over and flicked a chip of roofing tile off the ledge, watching it arc down to the bottom of the great hall, where it clattered. “He doesn’t want to hurt people,” he reiterated. “It’s like, when you’re my size, you know how easy it is to break things. You learn to avoid anything fragile, including the kids your age.”

Kizzie nodded solemnly. “Well I wish I’d known. He could have told me.”

“It’s a hard thing to talk about when you haven’t been thinking about it for years,” Montego explained.

“That makes sense. Hey, come on. We still haven’t found any loot!” Kizzie was on her feet in a moment, pulling Montego up behind her, and the two of them picked their way down the long third-floor hallway, avoiding rotten boards, searching each room they passed. It was mostly junk, broken furniture, discarded newspapers, trash sundries. A lot of dust too, as if no one had come up to the third floor for many years. He nosed around a wardrobe and the ugly, garish clothing within.

“Why is there no glass in any of the windows?” he called to Kizzie.

“It was all hammerglass,” came the muffled response from the next room. “That’s the first thing the debt collectors strip.”

Montego moved across the hall into what even his provincial upbringing recognized as a nursery. It was a long, narrow room pressed up under the corner eaves of the house. A mural, once brightly-colored but now long faded, stretched along two of the walls, depicting a child draped in furs dancing with mythical creatures of the forest. There was a dismantled crib laying on its side.

“Oh, look at that!” Kizzie exclaimed, entering behind him. “Hidden compartment under the crib. Probably was some treasure in there.” She gave it a kick. “Too bad the collectors found it. Or maybe the Herlo scion retrieved it before he fled.”

A little bit of color caught Montego’s eye. Way up in the awkward high corner of the room was a little window made of regular glass, and staring down at him from the sill was a toy soldier. It was positioned in a place so anyone shorter would have missed it.

“Hey Kizzie!” he said, pointing. He went to the wall and braced his knee. Wordlessly, Kizzie scrambled up onto his shoulders, climbing him like a tree. They wobbled briefly, but she gave a shout of victory and he carefully lowered her down. The little wooden soldier couldn’t have been more than six inches tall. She was dusty and covered in cobwebs, with a black cloth uniform beneath a tiny set of intricate armor streaked with colored glass—mostly blue, but with splotches of yellow, red, and white. The soldier once held something in each hand, but both had broken away.

“No way,” Kizzie whispered reverently.

“What is it?” Montego asked, touching the dusty helmet.

“This is a tin breacher!” Kizzie exclaimed. “Aldis told me about these. Look, this is real hammerglass! I think the cureglass and forgeglass are real too, but they’ve run out of resonance. Tin breachers are the best toy . . . ever! The old man who made them died a few years ago. I heard Blair Magna has one, but she won’t show it to anyone.” She slapped him on the arm. “Good find! She should have a sword and shield. Look around.”

They searched the nursery for some time, but there was no sign of any weapons for the little soldier. They continued their search throughout the third floor. Nothing else interesting caught their eyes, and they returned to the broken balcony overlooking the great hall, where Kizzie posed the soldier right at the ledge, arm lifted to swing a sword she did not have. Kizzie kept one finger on her as if to claim ownership, and Montego had a sinking feeling he wasn’t going to get to play with it.

To his surprise, she made a serious face and said, “We should sell her.”

“Why?”

“Because we agreed to split the loot. Can’t split a tin breacher. If we sell her then we can split the money.”

“How much money?” Montego asked, suddenly very conscious of his lack of income. A little money might let him pay Victor to train him for real. Then again, a child’s toy couldn’t be worth much.”

“Not sure,” Kizzie said.

“She’s very pretty,” Montego observed. He watched the side of Kizzie’s face. She didn’t want to sell the little toy. She was enraptured by it, head tilted, rubbing the hem of the tiny uniform between two fingers.

“Yeah, very pretty,” Kizzie whispered.

“Kissandra Vorcien!” a voice boomed, causing them both to jump. Kizzie’s eyes went wide, and she thrust the tin breacher into Montego’s hands.

“It’s Sibrial! Oh no. No, no, no, no. You have to hide.” Before Montego could react, she was pulling him to his feet, shoving him down the long hall back toward the nursery. “Keep her safe. Keep yourself safe. There should be servants’ stairs back here somewhere. Take them and run. Whatever you do, don’t let Sibrial see you.”

“Kissandra, you bastard, where are you?” the voice boomed.

Kizzie scurried back to the balcony, gesturing urgently for Montego to go and raising one hand in greeting to someone far below them. “I’m up here, Sibrial.”

“Get down here this instant!”

To Montego’s shock, Kizzie was actually trembling. She hurried out of sight, and Montego listened to her footsteps thump hurriedly down the stairs. He felt trapped, like a mouse in a box, his earlier fears coming back. He tried to steel himself—they weren’t doing anything wrong, after all. Just a little exploring. He looked down at the tin breacher in his hands. Could they be accused of looting? No. This was Kizzie’s brother. He probably didn’t even know Montego was here.

Montego stuffed the tin breacher into his tunic pocket and made his way toward the back of the house, careful to avoid rotten boards, his heart leaping every time the floor creaked underneath his step. He could hear voices—well, one voice really—as Sibrial shouted at Kizzie. It sounded very angry, and by the time Montego reached the main floor at the back of the house, he was worried sick for her.

Against his better instincts he crept back toward the great hall. He dared not get too close, Kizzie’s panicked face bright in his mind’s eye, but he managed to find a long hallway that gave him eyes on Kizzie.

Kizzie stood at the bottom of a staircase, head bowed, staring at the floor. A serious young man loomed above her—barrel-chested, with powerful arms and a square jaw. It must have been Sibrial, for the family resemblance was plain in the profile even at a distance. He wore tight black trousers, a yellow jacket, and a light-blue cape, and at his belt were sword and pistol. Two other men stood just behind him, similarly clad, watching somberly while he shouted and gestured.

“It’s for your own good,” Montego heard. Sibrial gestured, and his companions suddenly fell upon Kizzie. She was thrown to the floor, her tunic stripped from her, and one of the men produced a long length of stripped willow branch from under his cloak.

Montego knew what that was for. Some captains kept them around for discipline on their little fishing vessels. He felt that slow rage in his chest suddenly flare to life and was ten steps along toward the great hall before he had another conscious thought.

His eyes met Kizzie’s from the long distance and his forward momentum was arrested by the slightest shake of her head. Her eyes were red, face flushed, afraid but trying not to show it.

Montego stopped, retreated, and watched as the first blow fell. Kizzie braced beneath the stroke but did not so much as cry out. Montego’s chest was tight, his whole body itching to fall upon her attackers. But what could he do about three grown, armed men? What business did they have beating a little girl? Confusion and fury swirled within him, coalescing into a single memory: something that Grandma once told him.

That men who took themselves too seriously were very easy to distract.

He hurried out the back of the manor, breaking into a sprint that took him out and around, brambles tearing at his legs, overgrown branches scratching his face. As he suspected, there were three horses out front, tied to a broken marble statue. Montego stole a knife from a saddlebag and cut the reins, herding the horses up the drive, past the open gate, and smacking them out into the road.

Back outside the front door of the manor, he shouted,

“Thieves! Thieves! Someone stole your horses!” and then threw himself into the underbrush.

It took only a few moments for Sibrial and his companions to appear, cursing as they ran down the long drive. All three were gone within moments. Montego waited a few beats, then snuck back inside to find Kizzie kneeling in the center of the great hall, her tunic clutched to her chest, crisscrossing red stripes weeping blood on her back.

“Come with me,” Montego said gently, taking her by the arm and leading her up to the second floor, toward the back of the house, where it would be hard for the adults to find them. In a distant corner they rested, Kizzie leaning against his shoulder in silence, tears falling on his tunic.

Sibrial never returned, much to Montego’s relief. It was some time until Kizzie regained her composure, pulling away from him, wiping the snot from her nose with a bare arm. She shook out her tunic.

“You don’t have to turn around,” she said.

Montego did anyways, waiting until she was dressed and then turning to study her carefully. Raw emotion fluttered across her face, cracking a furious hardness that she struggled to keep in place.

“You cut their horses free?” Kizzie asked.

“Yeah.”

A little smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Thanks. He usually gives me one lash for each year of my life. You spared me a few. He’ll make up for it soon, but . . . thanks.”

“Why?” Montego asked, hearing his own confusion in the word. He didn’t have any siblings, but brothers were supposed to look out for you. To be dependable. Or at least that’s what he thought. “Why would he do that to you?”

Kizzie hugged herself. “One of my sisters told him I’ve been hanging out at Victor’s. Sibrial always says I shouldn’t spend time with anyone below my station. Or above my station. Same sister ratted that I’d come here to play.” She inhaled deeply, wincing as her tunic shifted.

“What are you going to do?”

Kizzie wiped her face once more. “I’ll pay them back. Some day. For now, I just . . . well, I know one less half sibling to trust. I’ve . . . got to go. Sibrial never lets me use cureglass on these, but someone will make me a salve. Did you save the tin breacher?”

Montego removed the toy from his pocket. “Here. I don’t think you should sell it.”

“But we have to split the loot.”

“We will,” Montego promised. “You can play with it sometimes, and I’ll play with it sometimes. We share it.”

Hesitatingly, Kizzie took the toy from him. A half smile played on her lips, followed by a storm of twitching emotions. She quickly looked away. “Thanks, Montego. I’ll see you around, okay? Let’s go different directions. Sibrial might come back any time.”

Montego returned to the Hyacinth, where he sat on the edge of his bed, flipping despondently through his books, thinking about those adults hurting Kizzie. He could picture her in his thoughts—resigned, braced, simply waiting for what she knew would come. His anger continued to twitch deep within his belly. He was angry at Sibrial and those men, but also at himself. He should have done more.

Kizzie asked him a few days ago if he could ever kill anyone. Well, he could have killed them without regret.

The next time he wasn’t going to stand aside while someone bullied his friend.

7

Montego didn’t see Kizzie for the next two weeks, but the time passed quickly. He tried to study his books, but Grandma’s cudgel called to him and he spent far more time practicing the forms he saw Victor teaching the older kids. He held his arm out with the cudgel for hours at a time, forcing a change to the muscle memory of the semaphore flags. The stances became easier to hold. They felt more natural.

His time, he knew, was running out. Yet like so many weeks of his childhood, it seemed to go by in a flash, and he suddenly found himself walking stiffly to Victor’s, in a daze, with the realization that he was meant to accompany Demir to the academy in the morning. He wrestled with the indignity of it—he was finally starting to learn how to be a cudgelist—and with the uncertainty of what they would expect at the academy. The other kids would mock his accent, and his education, and his lowly birth. Yet he did not fear the mockery.

He feared disappointing Adriana Grappo. He feared letting Grandma down.

It seemed a certainty in this moment. The only question was how long she would let him fail at the academy before she decided he was a lost cause and send him back to live with the other peasants out in the provinces.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden presence at his elbow, and Montego turned to find Demir striding alongside him in companionable silence, casually and without warning, as if they’d done this every morning together for years.

“Oh,” Montego said involuntarily. “Good morning.”

“Did you get the cureglass I left you?”

“Yeah, thanks. It kinda . . . hurts to use too much. Is it supposed to?”

Demir’s serious face twitched downward in a frown. “It’s not.”

“Maybe I’m using it wrong.”

“Hmm. By the way, you haven’t been studying.”

“I have!” Montego retorted. “A little.”

“Not much, I’d wager.”

“It’ll be enough.” Montego hoped he sounded confident.

“It won’t.”

The two words hung in the air between them, floating on that uncertainty and fear of disappointing Adriana. He felt his mood turn sour. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m not a Grappo like you. I’m just a charity case.” He thought of what Kizzie told him: that a bastard had few responsibilities. Surely an unwanted ward like him had even fewer. “It’ll be good enough to graduate.”

“Will it?” Demir asked.

A cold sweat broke out on the back of Montego’s neck. Glassdamnit. He could feel himself swinging from fear to bravado to reproach and back around again. He hated this kind of thing. He wished his goals were clear, that the Grappo had told him succinctly what he had to do and how he had to do it. Floating here in between, uncertain of his place in the world, was worse than watching Grandma waste away into death.

“A debt paid is not a charity case,” Demir said suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you are not a commoner anymore, Montego. You are a close member of a guild-family’s household.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means there are expectations.”

“Nobody has told me what they are.” Montego didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but he didn’t think he could stand this any longer. “I’ve been cared for but ignored, treated to wealth but not friendship. Do you people really live like this? Expectations. Responsibilities. Guild-families. I’m from the provinces, damn it. I’m a peasant. This all comes naturally to you, but it doesn’t to me. The only thing familiar here is . . .” Montego trailed off.

“The cudgeling arenas,” Demir finished. “That makes sense.” He suddenly stopped, forcing Montego to stop with him. “This thing,” Demir gestured between them, “being a ward of the Grappo, it also means we are your friends. We can be distant and distracted, but we do take friendship seriously. We have to. We do not have the power and prestige of the greater guild-families, but we make up for it with alliances.”

Montego looked down at his callused hands, getting rougher by the day with his cudgeling practice. He had friends out in the provinces. Not many, since his village was small and his size made him an outcast, but he did have them. They were people who would warn him when the semaphore tower was slippery, or bring Grandma milk when food was scarce. “I’m not sure I understand friendship the same way you do,” he admitted.

“Hm. That is . . . not your fault.” Demir suddenly turned on his heel and strode away, leaving Montego annoyed and perplexed on the street corner.

A dark, confused mood followed Montego the rest of the way to Victor’s, only breaking when he saw a familiar figure sitting inside the tenement courtyard.

“Hey you,” Kizzie said with a grin. Montego settled in to wait for Victor’s instructions. She bumped her knee against his. He bumped back.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to hang out here anymore. I don’t want you to . . . get in trouble again.”

“Yeaaah,” she said with a grimace. “I need to change haunts. But I wanted to see you before the academy starts. I talked to Demir yesterday. He charmed the headmaster into letting the three of us have a few classes together.”

“Why?” Montego asked. “I just saw him. He seemed put off that I haven’t been studying.”

“Oh, don’t let him give you that friendly-but-disappointed schtick. He learned it from his mom. He just wants to see you succeed.”

“He wants me not to embarrass his family.”

Kizzie shrugged. “He can want both.”

Their attention turned toward two girls in their midteens fighting in Victor’s arena. One took a bad strike and bled badly from a split lip.

“That’s the third injury in the last fifteen minutes. Something is under Victor’s skin. He might be gambling again, but whatever it is, maybe you ought not let his trainees beat you up today.”

“I’m not scared of his moods,” Montego responded, partly in truth, partly in bravado.

“You should be. Retired cudgelists are mean. A thousand aches that never quite healed. Bad managers that stole all their money. No more easy lovers and free booze at every club. Only the champions ever truly make something of themselves after they’re out.”

“Then I’m going to be a champion,” Montego declared, “even if I have to let Victor’s kids beat on me on his worst day.”

Kizzie scoffed. “Oh, I’m not saying you can’t take a hit. I’ve been around enforcers and cudgelists since I was a little squirt and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone shrug off a strike quite like you. But being a cudgelist is more than taking that hit. You gotta hit back.” She lowered her voice and leaned in toward him. “Look, I was here last night and I overheard Victor telling Sama that he’s gonna let you take strikes for as long as you’ll let him, then he’ll send you on your way. He’s not going to teach you anything.”

Montego frowned. Every morning he walked here full of hope—hope that it would be the day Victor told him to lift his grandma’s cudgel and learn how to use it. “I can do it. I’m learning to take strikes, and if he’ll give me a chance, I’ll learn to give them too. He’s got to see that.”

“It’s not what Victor sees,” Kizzie said sympathetically. “It’s what he wants. Even if he thinks you’re a cindersand mine of talent, he won’t train you if he doesn’t like you. And Victor doesn’t like you.” She tapped his shoulder. “I do, though. If I didn’t, I’d just let it happen.”

“If he won’t train me, then he’s a fool,” Montego said, thinking furiously, wondering what he’d do if Victor really sent him back out without so much as a word of advice.

“No argument there.”

“Look, I’ve been practicing.” He leapt up with Grandma’s cudgel and struck a pose, holding it perfectly straight in front of him for several moments, proud that there wasn’t the slightest tremble at the far end of the weighted cudgel head. He went through a series of maneuvers—long-armed, powerful sweeps and two-handed jabs that let him take advantage of his height and weight.

He finished and turned to Kizzie, who laughed and clapped. For a moment, Montego felt something within him glow. He gave a mock bow—it seemed like the right thing—and when he came back from that bow he noticed Victor over by the sand pit, staring at him with an annoyed, curled lip.

“What did I tell you about attacking?” Victor demanded.

That moment of glowing good feelings disappeared. Montego turned toward the cudgeling trainer and said, “You said I could pick things up, and I have been.”

“No you haven’t. It’s all wrong. Your stance is too open, your swings too wide. You’re still waving a semaphore flag, you fat idiot.”

Montego scowled. Over these last few weeks, he’d put that little cauldron of discontent within him off the fire, letting Victor’s physical and verbal abuse wash over him, but something about the way he said fat idiot put it right back over the heat again. He’d had a lot of time to think things over, and he’d thought that helping out would get him into Victor’s good graces. But no, if what Kizzie said was true, he was being used again. He lifted his chin and said, “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” There was a challenge in the question, and Victor put his hands on his hips.

“The semaphore flags aren’t something I have to train out. I can use that. Strength, precision, speed.”

“You’re leaving yourself open. I could bash you to pieces and duck under your swing. No cudgelist worth their salt will let themselves get hit by such clumsiness.”

“They’ll work,” Montego insisted. “Let me fight and I’ll show you.”

“You’re going to hurt someone, probably yourself.”

“Isn’t hurting someone the point?”

“Don’t backtalk me, boy.”

“Don’t call me a fat idiot. I leave myself open because I know I can take the strikes without going down. It’s a trap, and they’ll fall for it because they don’t realize how fast I am.” Maybe he was being arrogant, but Montego felt real heat under his collar now. Kizzie was right. Victor didn’t like him, and because of that he wouldn’t even give him the chance to prove worthy to teach.

“Talking about traps and strikes like you know a thing,” Victor spat. “Give him a little charity and a provincial moron turns into a cudgeling expert.”

“Teach him a lesson,” Kizzie said.

They both turned and stared at the girl. “What did you say?” Victor demanded.

She smiled back at them both. “I said teach him a lesson. You’re a fighter, Victor. I’ve seen you trounce Sama, even with your bum knee. I like Montego, but he doesn’t know what it’s really like. He’ll come around when you show him.”

Montego blinked at Kizzie, taking a moment to realize that Kizzie had set a trap of her own. She was baiting Victor, playing on his ego to allow Montego the chance to show off. The realization brought with it uncertainty. He waffled, wondering if he should apologize. He didn’t want to fight Victor. He wanted to learn from him. Before Montego could open his mouth, Victor snatched up his own spare cudgel and stormed over to the little sand arena. “All right, wise ass,” he called over his shoulder. “Come over here and see how it’s done.”

Brandishing Grandma’s cudgel, Montego followed Victor to the sand pit, glancing over his shoulder once at Kizzie. She winked at him. He squared up opposite of Victor, watching carefully for the surprise assault. When it didn’t come, he offered the bulb of his cudgel. Victor tapped it with his own and gave a derisive snort. Settling down into a crab-like stance, the trainer circled for several moments. Montego mirrored his moves, observing closely.

He saw the backstep in Victor’s body language a fraction of a second before it came. Victor’s right leg went back, his off-hand went to the shaft of the cudgel, and he uncoiled a powerful two-handed thrust.

Montego cocked and swung, putting all of his power behind it as he sidestepped. The weighted bulb came down across Victor’s arm. There was a loud crack, and the bulb snapped off, bouncing off the courtyard wall and rattling over the gravel. Victor went down hard, face-first into the sand, his own cudgel still beneath him, the prepared blow never landing.

Montego stared at Grandma’s cudgel. It broke his heart just looking at it. No, no, no. Not Grandma’s cudgel. He glanced at Kizzie for help only to find her mouth hanging open. She stared at Victor.

The cudgeling trainer rolled over with a groan, writhing and wriggling as if he’d been shot in the back. “Glassdamnit,” he swore. “Glassdamnit, glassdamnit.” Montego offered a hand. Victor slapped it away, his face red and furious. “Get out, you pissing freak!” he snapped. He swung clumsily for Montego’s legs. Montego just stepped away from the swings, blinking uncertainly. Hadn’t he proved himself? Hadn’t he shown some talent? Shouldn’t Victor be pleased?

“I just wanted to—” he began, still not believing that he broke Grandma’s cudgel.

Victor cut him off with a string of cursing. “I never want to see your face again, you arrogant pissing freak. Nobody is gonna teach you anything, I’ll make sure of it. Out!”

Montego backed off, his heart falling, confused and desperate. He gathered the bulb of Grandma’s cudgel and left the courtyard and the tenement, retreating to the street, where he stood in shock. Kizzie joined him a few moments later, her face flushed with excitement.

“Holy glass,” she swore excitedly. “Did you see what you did?”

“I broke Grandma’s cudgel,” Montego said in disbelief. “And I made sure no one will ever train me.”

“You just one-hit a silver-circuit contender! And you’re just a kid without forgeglass! Forget Victor. That was amazing.”

Montego felt withered inside. He was confused, angry, and feeling a fool. Kizzie manipulated him into a fight he didn’t want, and ruined his chances at getting trained. In an instant he could hear Victor telling his friends and colleagues about the fat provincial upstart, warning them away, the instructions passing through the entire cudgeling world. He would be untouchable. No one would train him. No one would sponsor him. Certainly no one would let him fight. He turned away from Kizzie.

“Hey, where are you going?” she asked. “I thought we could go exploring.”

“I’m going to study,” he said, hunching his shoulders and starting back to the Hyacinth. He gripped one piece of Grandma’s broken cudgel in each hand. These last three weeks of this “training” wasted, and now all he could do was go try not to embarrass his host. “See you at the academy,” he called over his shoulder.

8

A carriage delivered Montego and Demir to the Fordeef Academy early the next morning. It was a grand building just a short ride up the river from the hotel: four floors of mighty blue granite, ugly and square, enclosing a parade yard that could have swallowed Montego’s old village whole. It was a confusing swirl of humanity, packed with children of all ages as well as an equal number of adults in various cuts of tunic and jackets. It didn’t take long for Montego to realize that they were servants and bodyguards, and it seemed like he and Demir were the only kids who didn’t have them.

Expecting to be abandoned the moment their carriage dropped them off, Montego was surprised when Demir remained by his side. The younger boy walked confidently and purposefully, leading Montego through the press of bodies, occasionally stopping without complaint when Montego fell behind, overwhelmed.

“Mother asked me to keep an eye on you,” Demir explained to him as they entered a long, narrow hallway, “so we’ll be attending the same classes until you’ve been properly evaluated. Don’t worry about the first week, it’s mostly fluff, and no tutor worth listening to will expect a new ward direct from the provinces to know anything.”

The statement felt like an insult, but Montego could find no animosity in Demir’s tone or expression. He nodded along. He felt alien here, incredibly out of place, the wound of Grandma’s broken cudgel still fresh. His new clothes, which had seemed so comfortable yesterday, now hung from him like they belonged to someone else. His size didn’t help. Kids stared as he walked past, whispering behind hands. Bodyguards frowned at him as if assessing a new threat. Strangely, he wasn’t the only one being watched. Demir was just as much a subject of scrutiny as he was, if not more. That was odd.

He was, he realized, the only child without an inked sigil on his right hand.

Demir paused outside the door to a classroom and handed Montego a pocket watch. “I have to go evaluate a new tutor,” he said. “You can wait here until class starts in ten minutes.”

The prospect of standing alone in this chaos made Montego’s skin crawl. “What do you mean by evaluate?” he asked.

“Mother has certain expectations for my teachers,” Demir said. “If a new tutor isn’t up to her standards, she’ll change my classes.”

“I see,” Montego answered, though he certainly didn’t. Demir gave him a sharp nod and entered the room alone, leaving Montego standing uncertainly to one side. He watched a group of kids pass, shadowed by servants carrying stacks of books, making him feel self-conscious that he held his own. Adults and children alike glanced at him curiously as they passed.

“Montego?” a voice called.

Montego jumped, not expecting to hear his own name, and whirled to see the source of the shout. He found Kizzie bounding down the hallway toward him, grinning. She wore a long sky-blue tunic and matching jacket and a tiny stud of forgeglass in her ear. The long hair on top of her head was worked tightly into a dozen little braids that flopped as she walked, and when her tunic lifted with the cadence of her steps, Montego noticed her stiletto strapped to her leg above her boot.

“Hey, sorry about your Grandma’s cudgel, and the thing with Victor. I didn’t mean to ruin anything for you.”

Montego opened his mouth, a thousand frustrations ready to spill out. Kizzie’s smile stopped it all. “It’s nothing,” he said.

“Sorry anyways. I’ll show you the best fig vendor in Ossa to make it up to ya. Do you like it?” She asked, turning her head to show him her little forgeglass stud.

“It looks good, but why are you wearing forgeglass?”

Kizzie winked. “It’s fake, but it makes me look tough. Keeps the older kids off my back. Where’s Demir?”

“He’s inside evaluating his tutor.”

Kizzie chuckled. “Arrogant little shit. I love him. Everybody’s already talking about his glassdancer sigil. I’m not sure if it’s going to make him untouchable or a target. Everybody’s gonna be afraid of a glassdancer in the school.”

Of course they would. Even in the provinces they knew to fear glassdancers. Montego had never understood why. Because they could kill with a thought? That didn’t seem so special to Montego. He could kill with a thought too. It was just the thought of strangling a man, rather than stabbing him with glass.

As they talked, a steady stream of kids began to enter the auditorium. Some stopped to talk to Kizzie. She introduced him to each in turn. Some were polite. Others didn’t even acknowledge his presence. At best they shot a curious glance at the provincial giant without a guild-family sigil. When it grew closer to the hour, Kizzie gestured for Montego to head inside with her. He followed, pausing at the top of the auditorium.

It was a half-moon room not unlike a cudgeling arena, with little wooden desks instead of benches, leading down to a speaker’s podium and big slate walls with the names of several prominent historical figures written on them. The seats were mostly full, but there was a conspicuous grouping of empty spots right around Demir in the front row. Montego headed down the steps but felt a tug at his sleeve.

“Sit back here with me,” Kizzie told him.

“But Demir is all alone.”

“Oh, nobody is gonna sit next to a glassdancer.”

“I will.” He left Kizzie and hurried down to join Demir, squeezing behind the little desk next to him. A moment later, Kizzie joined him, shooting him an unreadable glance as she did.

“Is she up to your mother’s satisfaction?” Montego asked Demir, glancing significantly toward the tutor preparing her lesson.

Demir gave the slightest shake of his head.

Montego shrugged and sorted through his books, following Demir’s lead of putting the two history books on his desk and the rest beneath it. He looked around, trying to get a feel for the mood of the classroom, still amazed to see so many children all in one place. There were more people here than in his . . . he stopped himself. He couldn’t keep comparing this place to his old village. If he did, he would never grow out of his once home. That was there. This was here. He could handle it.

Everyone, he noticed, was wearing a little piece of purple witglass. Montego panicked at the realization, knowing he hadn’t brought any of his own. He turned to confess his mistake to Demir and found a piece already sitting on his desk. Demir’s expression remained entirely placid, but Montego could have sworn he smiled with his eyes.

He’d never much liked godglass. It tended to make his underarms itch after too long, and with his strength and speed even the low-quality forgeglass they used on fishing boats hadn’t been necessary. But this seemed to be how it was done here, so Montego hooked the witglass through a piercing on his left earlobe. He felt an immediate little jolt through the center of his brain, accompanied by the almost inaudible hum of sorcery vibrating gently in his ear. The speed of his thoughts seemed to double, a sensation that gave him an immediate headache.

The teacher rapped a cane against one of the slate boards and looked around the auditorium—her gaze lingering briefly on Demir and then on Montego—before she launched without preamble into her lecture.

She spoke quickly, her words accompanied by the scratch of a hundred pieces of chalk on miniature slate boards. Students wrote down important dates and names to cast them to memory before erasing and continuing. The writing didn’t bother Montego, but the witglass did. The lecture continued on, and on, and on. He had to pee. The lecturer kept going. His underarms began to itch. Then itched some more. The effort to resist scratching them made him sweat.

When he could handle it no longer, Montego took the piece of witglass out of his ear, trying to be as subtle about it as he could. He pocketed the piece, sighing in relief when it no longer touched his skin. He still had to pee, but the itching under his arms faded almost immediately.

It was, he had to admit, far harder to keep up with the lecture without witglass. He continued to write notes and erase them, but the words became a jumble. He did his best as the lecture entered its second hour.

The lecturer’s cane slapped his desk, causing him to jump, and Montego stared wide-eyed up at the stout woman. He realized he hadn’t heard a single thing in some time, and by the look on her face she knew it.

“Fading, boy?” she demanded.

“I apologize, ma’am.”

“Lady Nanette,” the teacher corrected.

“I apologize, Lady Nanette.”

“Hm,” she replied curtly. “Our provincial guest.” The way she said the word made the hair on the back of his arms stand on end, and Montego found himself holding his breath. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Montego.”

“Montego what?”

“Montego . . . al’Bou.”

A slate of giggles followed Montego’s announcement, and he felt his face grow red and his throat dry. He hunched his shoulders, wishing he could shrink into himself. Wishing that Demir hadn’t decided to sit on the front row where he had his back to everyone laughing at him. That cauldron in his belly began to heat. Could he not get through even a single day without causing an embarrassment? At this rate he’d be back out in the provinces by the end of the month!

Nanette’s nose scrunched into a condescending smile. “You’ve removed your witglass, Master al’Bou,” she observed. “Am I that boring, that you’ve decided to stop paying attention to my lecture?”

Montego glanced at Demir, but the boy simply lounged against his desk, playing with the long piece of chalk in his fingers.

“Don’t look at Master Grappo,” Nanette snapped. “He knows better than to help you. No, Master al’Bou, you will answer my question directly: Am I boring you?”

Montego briefly considered mentioning the itch under his arms, but he could only imagine the gales of laughter that would bring from his new classmates. He swallowed hard, wondering if he’d ever had so many people staring at him at once before. “No, Lady Nanette.”

“Then tell me who won the Battle of the Blessed.”

Another hard swallow. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Demir’s fidgeting intensify, and somehow it made the whole experience worse. “I don’t know, Lady Nanette.”

Nanette rolled her eyes. “Of course you don’t. Do you take this education seriously, Master al’Bou?”

“Yes, Lady Nanette.” The embarrassment threatened to consume him. Montego didn’t think he could get any hotter or more flushed. He gripped the little lip under his desk until his fingers hurt, a shout on the tip of his tongue to tell Demir to knock off his fidgeting, when he realized something.

Demir wasn’t fidgeting.

He was talking. In semaphore.

“I’m very sorry, Lady Nanette,” Montego said. “I have been studying, I’m just overwhelmed by being in the capital.”

“Of course you are,” Nanette scoffed. “Can you at least tell me the year of the battle?”

Demir’s piece of chalk flipped and whirled so quickly, the pauses so brief that Montego had a hard time following them without looking directly. “Nine-thirty-four. No, sorry, nine-thirty-six.”

Lady Nanette’s eyes narrowed. “How about the Wohl Assault?”

“Nine-thirty-nine.”

“And who was the defending general?”

That one took a little bit longer. Montego ummed for half a moment while Demir spelled it out. “It wasn’t a general, Lady Nanette. It was Colonel Ramtor of the Purnian Royal Knights.”

“So maybe you did a little reading after all,” Nanette said with a little scoff. “Thank glass you can at least do that. Put your witglass back in, Master al’Bou.” She turned to address the rest of the auditorium. “Ha! A provincial in the classroom. What will they think of next? All right, class, let us continue . . .” She returned to her droning lecture.

Montego did as he was told, putting his witglass back in even though the itching under his arms started up almost immediately. Kizzie gave him a sympathetic, wide-eyed look, but when he glanced at Demir the other boy was cool as ice, not even acknowledging his presence with a flick of his eyes. The chalk in his fingers spoke for him.

She’s arrogant and stupid. Ignore her. We’ll move to a different history instructor tomorrow.

With his own piece of chalk Montego spelled, When did you learn semaphore?

Last week.

How?

Demir casually tapped the witglass in his ear. Montego noticed something then—the piece Demir wore was darker and more vibrant than anyone else’s, including his own. That usually meant it was more powerful, wasn’t it? Grandma said that if you used witglass that was too good, it could drive you mad. Unless you were a genius.

Better not do this too much or even she will catch on, Demir spelled out.

Acknowledged, Montego signaled.

The lecture went another half hour before Nanette dismissed them for lunch time. Montego ripped out his witglass in relief, waiting with Demir and Kizzie while the rest of the auditorium emptied and the teacher retired to a little room off to one side of the podium. As they sat, Demir casually flipping through one of his history books, Montego noticed that a fine purple sheen of fishlike scales had developed on the backs of Demir’s hands.

“Demir,” he said, immediately worried, “you have glassrot.”

Demir shrugged and wiped at the scales. They came away at his touch, falling to the floor, and Demir said, “Happens sometimes when I wear witglass too long. I know my limits.”

“Can’t you get glassrot cancers like that?”

“Takes a long time to develop them,” Demir assured. “I’ll be fine.”

On his other side, Montego noticed Kizzie holding back, watching the two of them cautiously with a little frown. She suddenly leaned forward across Montego and whispered, “Can I see it?”

“See what?” Demir asked.

“The sigil.”

Demir flinched, hiding his left hand, and shook his head.

“Oh, come on,” Kizzie urged. “It’s not going to bite me.” When Demir still shook his head she added, “Montego says you don’t want to hurt anyone by accident. I’m your friend. You’d never hurt me. It’s okay to show me the sigil.”

“I’m not afraid,” Demir protested, but it was clear from his expression that the guess wasn’t far off. Slowly, as if forcing himself to do so, he lay his hand flat on the desk in front of him. Kizzie came around to look at it closely, studying the inked sigil. Montego glanced but did not stare. To do so seemed rude.

Kizzie hmm-ed. “I thought it would be bigger.”

“If it was bigger then it wouldn’t fit on my hand, moron,” Demir told her. For only the second time since Montego met him, Demir actually smiled. It was brief, only there for a moment, but his face lit up so thoroughly that Montego felt himself smiling along with him. It was infectious.

He decided right then he really did want to be Demir’s friend.

Kizzie slapped Demir’s hand playfully. “It’ll be bigger when you get an actual tattoo,” she said.

“When is that?” Montego asked.

“Seventeenth birthday,” Demir answered, touching the inked Grappo sigil on his right hand. “Same day as this one. Come on, let’s go find some lunch. We can see if old Talty has his olive oil bread cart out this year.”

“I promised to take Montego to Jen’s Figs,” Kizzie said.

“We’ll have time for both,” Demir replied confidently.

The three of them climbed the auditorium steps, but when they reached the top Lady Nanette suddenly poked her head out of her little office. “Master Grappo, a moment if you please.”

Demir nodded for them to go on ahead. Montego and Kizzie stepped out into the hallway, where Kizzie pointed down the hallways, sketching out the basic layout of the academy for him. He would not, she told him, be in Demir’s classes after his evaluations. Even though he was almost three years younger, Demir was already the smartest kid in the school, studying mathematics and sciences with the older, final-year children. Montego couldn’t hope to keep up.

Though, Montego told himself quietly, it couldn’t hurt to try. Maybe Demir could help him study.

As they chatted, Montego saw a light commotion coming toward them—students moved quickly out of the way, falling silent, hurrying down side halls. It was like watching the fishing boats scatter when one of the big coastal barges entered the bay. Within a few moments a pair of older boys appeared out of the school-day crowd, and to Montego’s shock, he recognized one of them.

It was the Immortal Keloncoalt. He looked more normal outside of the arena, dressed in a fine tunic like the other students, a small servant girl scurrying alongside carrying his books. He strode with purpose and confidence, shoving aside anyone who dared stand in his path with those massive shoulders of his, providing a way for the boy behind him.

The second boy must have been seventeen or so. He was tall, over six feet, with short blond hair that contrasted with his dark olive Ossan skin. While Keloncoalt stalked, this other boy simply strolled, barely seeming to see anyone around him.

The pair walked right past Montego and Kizzie and into the auditorium, closing the door behind them. Very strange. Did they have a meeting with Lady Nanette as well?

“Who was the blond?” Montego asked, turning back to Kizzie, only to find that she’d gone from chatting one moment to very still the next, her eyes unfocused, like an animal that sensed a predator.

“Jepper Dorlani,” she said quietly. “The Dorlani heir. The other one was—”

“Keloncoalt,” Montego finished. “I saw him fight when I first came to the capital.”

“Yeah. You don’t want anything to do with those two. Lay a finger on Jepper and the whole Dorlani guild-family will come down on your head. Lay a finger on Keloncoalt and, well, he’ll just tear you in half with his bare hands. Jepper’s mom is on the Inner Assembly, so he can get away with anything. Come on, we should go find lunch.”

“What about Demir?”

Kizzie’s face twitched nervously, alarming Montego. It was the same way she looked when her brother Sibrial appeared at the old Herlo mansion. “He’ll catch up.”

Montego checked the door to the auditorium. It was locked. Inside, he could hear someone talking loudly, their voice unfriendly. “Kizzie, what’s going on?”

Kizzie looked both directions and lowered her voice. “Jepper has been harassing Demir ever since he got his glassdancer sigil. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Demir will be okay. He can charm himself out of anything,” Kizzie said, breathless and trembling.

Ignoring Kizzie’s warnings, Montego pressed his ear to the door. The words were muted, but understandable.

“Come on, Grappo. Show us something,” a boy’s voice insisted. Jepper, Montego thought.

Keloncoalt added, “Yeah, dazzle us with that glassdancer magic.”

“You’ve got the sigil. Surely you’ve learned a bit by now.”

Demir’s answer was cool and calm. “I haven’t learned anything. This sorcery is not my choice.”

“But you still have it,” Jepper said.

“I don’t want it. I want to help people, not hurt them.” Both boys barked laughter, as if Demir had said something hilarious. He went on, “Lady Nanette, may I go now?” There was no answer. “Lady Nanette?”

“I want to see sorcery,” Keloncoalt insisted. “You’re not leaving until I do.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to hurt you?” Demir asked. He was still calm, but Montego could hear a note of desperation in his voice.

“You? Hurt me? Little baby Grappo thinks he could even scratch the Immortal Keloncoalt! We’re Dorlani, kid. You can’t lay a finger on us even if you were stupid enough to do so.” There was the very distinct sound of a punch landing. “Now show us some magic!”

Montego didn’t stop to think about the consequences of his actions. His mind filled with the memory of Sibrial flogging Kizzie and he saw red. Demir had not abandoned him to that horrible teacher, and Montego could not abandon Demir to some bigger kids. He stepped back, braced his back leg, and kicked in the auditorium door.

Jepper and Keloncoalt had Demir trapped between them about halfway down the auditorium steps. Demir held his shoulder, gritting his teeth in pain. All three looked up at Montego as he descended toward them.

“Piss off,” Jepper said.

“Leave him alone,” Montego insisted.

Both older boys turned toward him. Keloncoalt put himself between Montego and Jepper, hands on hips, puffing out his chest. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll make you.”

“Ha! I . . . wait, aren’t you that kid who bothered me outside the arena a couple weeks ago?” Keloncoalt’s face split into a massive, cruel grin. “That provincial moron. Hey Jep, this idiot wants to be a cudgelist.”

“I bet. Did Mommy hire you a bodyguard, Demir? Little good it’ll do you.”

“I said to leave him alone.”

Jepper scoffed. “Kel, tear this kid in half.”

Montego didn’t wait for him to finish the instruction. He descended the final steps, his fist already swinging low, catching Keloncoalt right in the gut and eliciting a surprised grunt from the adolescent fighter.

It was the only blow Montego would land on the cudgelist.

Keloncoalt was on him like a mountain bear, roaring wordlessly in his face, his fists a blur as he pounded Montego in the stomach and chest. Montego stumbled back beneath the onslaught, turning with the punches, taking them full on so that he could snag Keloncoalt by the shoulders of his jacket with both hands. Keloncoalt responded by grabbing Montego by the tunic, and the two of them struggled back and forth on the steps, shuffling and huffing as each tried to throw the other.

Keloncoalt let go with one hand and jabbed Montego in the nose. Stars exploded in Montego’s vision, his whole face going numb. He blinked tears out of his eyes but did not loosen his grip. Keloncoalt jabbed again, and again, and again.

“Get off me!” Keloncoalt insisted.

Montego could feel the blood pouring down his face, his lips split, head pounding. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Demir standing back, simply watching, expressionless.

“Call off your dog,” Demir said to Jepper.

“Shut up, Grappo. Kel, why are you fooling around? I told you to tear him in half and . . .” As he spoke, he came at Montego from the side, one fist raised. Montego reacted from instinct—he backhanded Jepper, sending him flying into the desks, scattering books and chairs. It was a distraction enough that Keloncoalt finally let go. Montego shoved the big fighter backward, stumbling down the stairs, then put himself between the two older boys and Demir.

Jepper let out a piercing wail. “He hit me! That provincial oaf hit me! Lady Nanette!”

Keloncoalt regained his balance and came at Montego once more, his fist ready, but he froze when Lady Nanette emerged from her office at a run, yelling as she did. “What is going on here? Glassdamnit, you were supposed to have a little fun with the Grappo boy. No violence. Now get out of here, you fools!” She sprinted up the stairs, making a shooing motion, and it took Montego a moment to realize that she was gesturing at Jepper and Keloncoalt. Keloncoalt fetched his master and the two of them fled, leaving Montego and Demir to Nanette’s wrath.

Nanette snatched Montego by the ear, twisting it hard enough to double him over, then did the same to Demir. He caught a glimpse of Kizzie as Nanette dragged him and Demir out of the classroom. She lingered back with a group of other students, watching with a grimace, but made no move to help.

They were hurried down the hallways and shoved into an office, not a word said for Montego’s battered face, and before she left Nanette leaned over and spoke harshly in Montego’s ear.

“I’m going to fetch the headmaster and Lady Grappo. It’s over for you, provincial. The Dorlani will bury you.”

9

Montego paced the office, sweating badly, probing at his splits and bruises, wondering what fate was in store for him. What had Kizzie said? You can’t touch a guild-family heir? Too late for that. He could feel unknown consequences hanging over him like an axe over the chicken’s neck. Perhaps, he reflected, it would be best if they sent him back to the provinces. Would he even make it back out there?

So much for coming to the capital to become his own man.

“Why are the adults here so stupid?” he asked. “First Victor, now Nanette.”

“They’re not stupid,” Demir answered. He sat on the headmaster’s desk, feet dangling off the side, looking awfully calm about the whole thing. Montego supposed Demir had nothing to worry about. It wasn’t he who assaulted Keloncoalt and Jepper. “They want you to fail.”

“They don’t even know me.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re a provincial. They’re prejudiced and vindictive. Illogical and foolish, but common enough.”

Montego forced himself to stop pacing. He wasn’t sure which idea was worse—that he was being stifled on purpose or from ignorance. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because I made a mess. I’m going to disappoint your mom.”

“They started it,” Demir said with a shrug. “You came to my aid.”

“Adults won’t see it like that. They never do. I know how these things work. I shouldn’t have done anything. I’ve only made it worse.”

“Perhaps,” Demir allowed. “Jepper’s been after me for weeks. It’s not often a guild-family member is found with glassdancing potential, and Jepper thinks I’m some kind of toy to play with.” He gazed at the ceiling, his lips moving silently, as if he were doing calculations in his head. “Nanette is a Dorlani client. No doubt she arranged that little ambush on behalf of her patron. She’s over at the Assembly right now pulling my mother out of her meetings. The Dorlani would never miss such a good opportunity to humiliate us. Nor we them, if the situations were reversed. The Grappo might be a small guild-family, but we wield outsized influence within and without the Assembly.”

“Without?” Montego asked.

“The people,” Demir explained, shooting Montego a smile. “Not many advocate for commoners. We do, and they love us for it. We gain power from our empathy.” Demir hopped down from the desk and circled Montego, examining his face. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

“You’re speaking Ossan.” There was something about Demir’s quizzical little expression that made him laugh despite their situation.

“No, I mean you really understand. I explained a concept to you and you grasped it.”

“Sure,” Montego responded indignantly. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s complex. People with years of training often don’t fully grasp nuance.”

“I don’t think it’s all that complex. Guild-families are just big families, and every village has drama. Grandma taught me about that before I could read.” He sniffed and touched his ear, which still burned from the twisting that Nanette gave it. Why did that hurt so much more than getting his face punched in by Keloncoalt? “One of our village elders had two sons, bigger than everyone else. They used to steal a bit of every catch, and they got away with it because they could. Like guild-families, I suppose.”

“Ha!” Demir barked a laugh. “Indeed. How long did that go on?”

“Until one of the sons fell into the bay late one night. Onto several harpoons.” Montego looked at his big, callused hands, wondering what jobs they’d do now. “Nobody likes bullies. Sometimes someone does something about it.”

“You?”

“Oh, no. I was only five. I don’t know who did it.”

“Hm. That was impressive, by the way. I’ve seen Keloncoalt kill with a single cudgel swing and knock people out with a punch. He must have hit you seven or eight times and you didn’t even cry out.”

Montego touched his nose and his vision went blurry. It was definitely broken. “Eleven times,” he said. “That’s how many times Keloncoalt punched me. He’s really fast. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Montego hugged himself, wondering what would happen to him. The answer seemed to come sooner than he wanted when the door to the office opened and in walked a very irate-looking Adriana Grappo, followed by a smug Nanette. Montego felt his eyes narrow at the sight of the woman. Why did everyone in the capital hate him so much? First Keloncoalt, then Victor, then Nanette. It seemed impossible that they could really loathe provincials they’d never met. Was it something deeper? Or was he just unlucky?

“Why does he look like that?” Adriana demanded. “Why hasn’t he been given cureglass?”

“He attacked Jepper Dorlani unprovoked,” Nanette protested. “Criminals don’t get cureglass.”

“He’s a child, you asshole.” Adriana searched the headmaster’s desk until she produced a little piece of red godglass, coming over and tenderly sliding it through Montego’s only piercing. Montego immediately felt his face tighten. The trickle of blood from his nose ceased, and though his arms began to itch he ignored it, hoping the cureglass would do its work.

Adriana went to stand like a military commander in the center of the room, hands clasped behind her back, and looked between Demir and Montego. Something about that moment of kindness—giving him cureglass before whatever punishment would come—set off something in the back of his brain and he realized he didn’t want to humiliate the Grappo. Their generosity might have been cold and strange to him but it had been generosity, and he found he liked Demir. He stepped forward.

“I attacked Jepper Dorlani unprovoked. What happened is my fault and I’m sorry for it. Tell me the punishment.” He ignored Nanette, staring just at Adriana Grappo.

“Is this true?” Adriana asked Demir.

“No,” Demir answered.

Nanette snorted derisively. “The provincial is a violent moron. We should hand him over to the Dorlani immediately.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Demir said.

Montego’s stomach twisted in knots. Why wouldn’t Demir let him take the fall? Wasn’t that what commoners did for the guild-families? He opened his mouth to protest, but Adriana held up a finger sharply, cutting him off. “Tell me what happened,” she said to Demir.

“Montego,” Demir said, “is not a moron. On the contrary, he grasps subtle and complex political systems without ever having been exposed to them before. He just has an allergy to godglass, as Lady Nanette would have noticed if she’d bothered to ask him why he was uncomfortable wearing witglass for so long. Glance behind his ears. You’ll see the purple discoloration there caused by witglass and an allergy.”

“Why would I ask—” Nanette began, but Adriana gave her the same sharp finger of silence that she gave Montego. Adriana gestured for Demir to go on.

“Lady Nanette arranged an ambush so that Jepper and Keloncoalt Dorlani could interrogate me about my glassdancing. I was outnumbered, out-sized, and my requests for assistance were ignored by Lady Nanette. Montego came to help.”

“How dare you lie so boldly?” Nanette hissed.

Demir shot Nanette a glance so withering that it made Montego take a half a step back. “You don’t think a Grappo could pull the strings for a shackleglass inquiry to learn the truth from everyone involved? You shouldn’t think of us as a minor guild-family. Whatever the Dorlani promised you for this little piece of political theater, they didn’t bother to warn you that the Grappo strike above our weight, as they’d say in the cudgeling arena.”

Montego’s mouth hung open. He’d never heard a child dress down an adult like that before, and Demir did it so pointedly that it might have come from Adriana herself. And an allergy? He’d never heard of such a thing. He thought everyone was uncomfortable with godglass.

“Lady Grappo,” Nanette said, drawing herself up, “I have been instructing students across the Empire for twenty years! Never in my time have I—”

“Ssst,” Adriana hissed.

“Are you going to let—”

“Ssst,” Adriana repeated, not even bothering to look at the instructor. “You exposed my son to direct danger at the hands of a powerful guild-family and their very dangerous cudgelist. I will give you a twenty-four-hour head start before I ruin your life. I suggest you use that time fleeing the capital. Get out.”

Nanette’s eyes grew wide. She stared back at Adriana for a handful of moments before she fled the room, leaving just Montego, Demir, and the still irritated-looking Adriana Grappo. Adriana’s shoulders slumped the moment Nanette was gone, and she walked around to sink into the headmaster’s chair, lowering her head into her hands.

“I take it the votes are going well,” Demir observed.

His mother looked up sharply at him. “Glassdamned coalition of lesser guild-families barely squeaked by the Dorlani to pass that famine relief for Kashti. They’re furious. This wasn’t the first attempt they’ve made to humiliate us, and it won’t be the last. Montego, did you touch Jepper?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It was obviously an accident,” Demir interjected. “Jepper went to attack him while he was scuffling with Keloncoalt.”

Adriana grimaced. “Glassdamnit. A glassdamned nightmare. Ambushing my son, pulling me out of a meeting with Supi and Father Vorcien. I’ll crush that twerp of a tutor, but the Dorlani will laugh behind their hands at this for months. The coalition will be even harder to keep together. Glassdamnit. You”—she pointed at Demir—“must never walk into a trap like that again. You’re better than that. Smarter than that.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Demir said with a nod.

Adriana’s gaze shifted to Montego. He braced himself, awaiting his punishment. Adriana just continued to examine him. The silence stretched, every moment tightening the knot in his stomach. He could see the decision playing out in her eyes—what to do with this overgrown provincial boy she’d taken on as a ward? Surely it would be safest to get rid of him, to send him back to where he came from. Montego understood that intrinsically, and knew it would be a kindness to him as well. After all, he’d be out of the Dorlani reach way out there in the provinces.

Adriana finally spoke. “When you defended Demir, did you understand the power dynamic at play?”

“I think I did, ma’am. Kizzie told me.”

“But you defended him anyway.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s my friend,” Montego answered without hesitating. “He’s been kind to me, and it would be wrong to abandon him to any pain.”

“Did you coach him?” Adriana asked Demir.

“No, Mother.”

Adriana pinched the bridge of her nose. “You just made my decision much more difficult, Montego.”

“I didn’t mean to, ma’am.”

“The situation is complicated. You struck an heir. That’s punishable by death. Whether or not Aelia Dorlani is willing to forgive it as an accident doesn’t matter. If she does not demand your head for an assault on her heir, then she will be humiliated. If I do not protect my ward, then I will be humiliated.”

“There is nothing to strike a balance?” Montego asked.

“Something will come up. I’ll make sure you’re unharmed. Go study. The situation is no longer your concern.” The sudden dismissal left Montego feeling shocked and helpless. He could do nothing but follow Demir into the hallway, where kids stared at his battered face and blood-soaked tunic.

Demir tugged gently on his arm and said, “Come on, let’s go home.”

Home. This wasn’t Montego’s home. These weren’t his people. He was nothing but a guest who’d made life harder for his hosts. It rankled and festered, but he did as he was told.

10

“Mother will protect you,” Demir assured as they walked along the Tien River, books under their arms. The pain from Montego’s nose had lessened, though there was a general ache across his whole body that he suspected came from the cureglass itself as it continued to hum in his ear. His underarms itched, but both itch and ache were bearable knowing that his nose was healing quickly. An allergy, Demir had said. How strange.

“I don’t want her to protect me,” Montego protested. “I want to protect myself.”

“Unfortunately, things don’t work like that here.”

“Yeah. I’ve noticed.” Montego heard how petulant he sounded and made a forceful effort to remove the whininess from his voice. “Thanks for the answers back in the classroom.”

“Thanks for sitting next to me,” Demir replied. Despite what felt like dire circumstances to Montego, Demir seemed energized. He grinned, kicking at the cobbles, his gaze fixed at a distant nothing like he could see a path that Montego could not. “Nobody wants to play with me since I got this.” He held up the hand with the glassdancer sigil. “No play, no study, no meeting me at cudgeling matches. Even Kizzie has been avoiding me.”

“She thought you were avoiding her.”

“I . . .” Demir started to protest. He stopped, thought, and finished, “I can see that now.”

“She didn’t want me to intervene,” Montego said with a scowl. In his mind, that made her a coward, consequences be damned. He didn’t want her to be a coward. She was his friend.

“Don’t be hard on her. She’s a bastard. Her position is even more precarious than either yours or mine. She has to choose her battles.”

Montego thought of the fear in her eyes when she heard Sibrial’s voice. “I guess I’m still learning how things work.”

“Her family won’t legitimize bastards, even if she is favored. The wrong move and she’ll no longer be favored. Without their protection . . .” Demir grimaced. “Kizzie knows how to lurk in the shadows. She’s very good at it, and it’ll consume the rest of her life. Just like politics will consume mine.” Demir patted one of his books, an instruction on political theory that Montego hadn’t been given.

“Do you want it to?”

Demir blinked back at him. “Nobody has ever asked that before.” He paused, tilting his head to the sky, then nodded. “I do. If Maj Madoloc gets her way I’ll just be another military killer like this.” He held up his glassdancer sigil. “I want to help people. In the capital, politics is the best way to do that.”

“Couldn’t you just give away some money or something?”

Demir chuckled. “Ha. I could. That’s one way to help people, but . . . it’s more than that. I want to change the world, Montego.”

“I just want to be my own man,” Montego confessed.

“I’m not sure that’s possible in Ossa.”

Montego frowned. “I thought maybe the cudgelists could be their own men, but now I’m not so sure. They all have sponsors.”

“Having a sponsor doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not your own man,” Demir said thoughtfully.

“But you share the glory with them. And the winner’s purse.”

Demir held his books out, three in each palm, as if balancing them on scales. “It’s a tightrope everyone in Ossa has to walk. We’re all beholden to someone, with others beholden to us. Even guild-families. We might not be clients to anyone else, but we have business partners to whom we owe our money, our influence, and our allegiance. You have to think of a sponsor more as a business partner. They don’t own you.”

Montego snatched up a piece of gravel and threw it far out into the Tien. “Maybe. But I’m never going to get one anyways.”

“You really want to be a cudgelist?”

“Yeah. Ever since I was little. Grandma didn’t want me to, but she didn’t stop me from watching the matches. I can work, but I’d rather fight.”

“You have to wear forgeglass in the arena.”

“I’ll forgo it. I don’t need it.”

“It’s literally in the rules.”

“Oh,” Montego said. “Well, then I won’t let the matches last long enough for the allergy to bother me.” Demir laughed like Montego had said something he really enjoyed. Montego asked, “Am I going to cost your family?”

Demir hesitated.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Aelia Dorlani has to follow tradition. She’ll demand your head. Mother will reject her demands. It’ll go in front of a magistrate and cost us all huge amounts of money. Once Mother has tired them out a bit, she’ll offer to exchange a few of her votes to make the Dorlani drop the whole thing, and that’ll be the end of it.”

“Those votes take her a lot of work, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And she uses them to help people?”

“As often as she can.”

Montego considered this as they finished their walk to the hotel. They had a late lunch, then spent the afternoon studying. Montego found himself feeding off Demir’s calm, realizing how much easier it was to study with Demir’s help. By the time they’d finished dinner and Demir went to one of his private tutors, Montego had made a decision.

He dressed in his finest tunic and slipped out of the hotel. He felt resolute as he navigated the city, asking for directions and taking hackney cabs across the river to the Family District, following the path he’d taken with Kizzie a couple weeks ago. The Dorlani resided in one of those magnificent manors on the hill: an estate bigger than a provincial village, crowned by a four-story house almost as big as the Hyacinth Hotel.

He presented himself to the doorkeeper.

“I must see Aelia Dorlani.”

The doorkeeper—a muscular woman of about twenty in a tightly-cut tunic and jacket—laughed at him. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Come back when you do.”

“It’s important,” Montego insisted.

“Get out of here, kid. Kings make appointments with Aelia Dorlani. She doesn’t—”

Montego cut her off. “Tell her that the provincial boy who struck her heir would like to make things right.”

The doorkeeper regarded Montego in surprise for several long moments. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Huh. You, uh, stay here.” The doorkeeper withdrew inside the manor. The minutes ticked by, and Montego stood off to one side as the normal traffic of the place continued around him—guests arriving or leaving, deliveries being made. Across the lawn, several of the grounds crew stood unsubtly behind some bushes, watching Montego, whispering to themselves. He thought he saw Jepper’s face in a window.

After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened again and Montego was ushered inside, through a foyer of black, gold-flecked marble, down a hallway flanked by stone busts whose labels told him of people long dead, and into a rich office almost as big as the Hyacinth foyer.

A stately woman in her fifties lounged on a divan beside a roaring fire, a ledger laid out beside her, a pretty young woman standing behind her and occasionally feeding her an olive. Her silk gown splashed over the divan and pooled around the feet of the furniture.

“Do you know who I am, provincial?” the woman asked.

“You’re Aelia Dorlani,” Montego guessed.

“And yet you do not tremble.”

“I haven’t seen anything about you that makes me tremble,” Montego replied, not realizing until the words had left his mouth that they might be taken for bravado. It was simply the truth, after all.

Aelia gave a throaty chuckle. “You’re a fiery one, aren’t you? Did Adriana send you?”

“No, ma’am. I came on my own. She explained to me the complicated situation and I thought I could spare both of you the effort of dealing with the hassle.”

“If you came to apologize, I’m afraid that will not be nearly sufficient. Your age and your ignorance do not excuse that you struck a Dorlani heir.”

“It was an accident.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll require your life, or I would lose standing within and without my family.”

“I didn’t come to apologize, ma’am.”

Aelia sat up, closing the ledger in front of her and studying Montego carefully. “Bold. Color me intrigued, boy. Go on.”

“I suggest we settle this with a cudgeling match. I want to fight Keloncoalt. If I win, the matter is over. If I lose, I’ll submit myself to your punishment.”

“I understand you took a few hits from Keloncoalt. And you’re still standing. That’s impressive. Why would I care to settle things in such a manner?”

Here was the real gamble: whether Aelia would have any interest in Montego’s proposal. It was a wild guess based on nothing more than assumptions, but Montego felt confident. The guild-families were many things: arrogant, prejudiced, expedient. This offer was using those qualities against them. “Because if you don’t, then you’ll waste your time in a protracted conflict over a child commoner with a lesser guild-family. Honor settled quickly is better for both parties.”

“Is this Demir’s idea?” Aelia asked. “That little shit is too clever by half.” Montego didn’t bother to correct her. He rocked his head in what might be taken for a nod. Aelia leaned back, drawing her fingernails along her neck while she studied him down the length of her nose. She scratched her collarbone. “Adriana has already informed me that she intends on protecting you. Keloncoalt is going to be a gold-circuit contender when he comes of age. He’s so good at cudgeling that we adopted him. Why would you risk yourself like this?”

“Because I don’t want to be protected. I want to stand or fail on my own.”

“I could just make you disappear right now,” Aelia said, stifling a yawn.

“Demir knows where I am,” Montego lied.

“Hm. You’re only twelve, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And how many times have you held a cudgel?”

“Only a few. I’m not trained, ma’am, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“You bait me by stacking the odds against yourself. What a bold child you are. Courageous too. You’d make a perfect enforcer. I wonder if Adriana already has that in mind for you.”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

Aelia rose from the divan, stretching languidly and then heading to her desk. The train of her gown followed her, hissing gently along the tile. She sorted through several ledgers, picking one and flipping through the pages seemingly at random. Finally she said, “You are right. This is a matter of honor that I pursue only because I’m expected to do so. Fighting with the Grappo only sullies my own position, and I would prefer to settle it quickly.”

“Will Keloncoalt accept my challenge, ma’am?”

“Keloncoalt will do what I tell him to do. I’m intrigued by you, provincial. Perhaps after Keloncoalt takes you apart, we’ll put you back together and force you to serve as a Dorlani enforcer. There’d be a beautiful justice in having you protect the one you hurt.”

“I’d rather die, ma’am.”

“Good. We have an agreement, then? If you win then honor is settled, and if you lose then your life belongs to me one way or another.”

Montego hesitated. He was almost certain to lose to Keloncoalt. He was too well-trained for a complete amateur like Montego. Death was one thing. Service was entirely different. He could, he supposed, force Keloncoalt to kill him in the arena. Keloncoalt had already showed himself willing and capable.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Aelia rang a little bell, and a servant appeared to show Montego out of the room. It was after dark when he finally returned to the hotel, entering unnoticed and going directly to his bedroom, where he lay on top of the sheets of his bed, staring at the ceiling. He could not sleep, and was still in the same position when the door to his bedroom opened.

He felt eyes on him, sensed a frustrated presence like when Grandma found out about one of his fights and was deciding whether to scold him or not. Montego sat up to discover Adriana standing in the doorway, brow furrowed, looking tired and harried, a heavy-looking envelope in one hand. Demir lurked in the hallway behind her.

“What have you done?” Adriana demanded.

“Ma’am?” Montego sat up.

She crossed the room to thrust the envelope in Montego’s lap. “You struck a deal with Aelia Dorlani? For a cudgeling match?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you have any idea what she’ll do to you if you lose?”

“She’ll have my head, ma’am. It’s better this way. Easier on you and Demir. Faster for us all.”

“I should slap you silly for this,” Adriana said. “Aelia expects this contract signed by morning. She’s putting you against Keloncoalt—that monster is going to tear you to pieces.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Adriana let out a barking little laugh. “Look here, child, I . . .”

“Mother,” Demir interrupted, “Montego is right. It’s best this way.”

“He’s your friend, Demir. You would let him walk to his own death?”

“I’d let him fight as his own man.”

Adriana stood beside Montego’s bed for some time, and Montego held his breath, waiting for her to forbid the fight. When the silence grew painfully long, he opened the envelope to find a contract within. The language was simple and straightforward, just as he and Aelia discussed. He walked over to his writing desk and used his quill to scrawl his sloppy signature at the bottom of the paper. He held it out to Adriana. “Please send this back to the Dorlani, ma’am.”

Adriana snatched it back. “If you live, I will be forced to raise the two most bull-headed boys in the Empire. Fine. Your fate is your own.” She left with the contract. Demir stood in the doorway for a few moments, meeting Montego’s gaze.

“I’ll make sure you have a cudgel and forgeglass for the fight,” Demir said. He gave Montego the slightest nod before shutting the door.

Montego’s fingers shook with nerves, but his heart sang. For better or for worse, he had made his own decision. He would live or die by his own hand, and that was a freedom few had.

11

Adriana hired a cudgeling trainer—because she could just do that, apparently—and Montego spent every waking moment of the next few days with the broken, kindly old man in the courtyard of the Hyacinth Hotel. Montego didn’t even have time to be frustrated by the ease with which the trainer was acquired, nor the way he laughed derisively when Montego mentioned Victor’s name. The old man put Montego through the paces, adjusting his swings, gently explaining everything he did wrong.

Montego expected it to take weeks to arrange the fight. Officials had to be booked, schedules aligned, a fighting slot reserved. He was, it turned out, very wrong about his assumptions. By the end of the week, he found himself standing in the Melkist Arena garbing room, wearing nothing but the two strips of thick leather that made up a cudgeling girdle, feeling alone as a crowd gathered in the bleachers outside.

He could see them through a narrow window looking out from the garbing room, packed into the stone benches, harassing the hawkers who walked up and down the aisles with questionable meats and candies. These people were here to see the Immortal Keloncoalt put some provincial boy in his place. Montego wondered if any of them would remember his name tomorrow.

He found himself thinking about Grandma as he waited. All his life she’d been large in body and spirit, tough as a keelboat. Consistent. Dependable. Then the glassrot cancers struck. Consequences from her time as a cudgelist, then as a soldier, they said.

She lived a whole year longer than anyone expected, but by the time she finally died she was nothing but a ghost of herself, withered to nothing, barely able to croak two sentences in a row. He remembered sitting by her bed, waiting for her to tell him something profound that would carry him through his life without her.

Instead she’d muttered the words, “Go to Ossa. Find the Grappo. Live a full life.”

Live a full life. Montego thought about that phrase as he picked at a loose stitch on his cudgeling girdle. Had he lived a full life? Certainly not, just shy of thirteen years, but in that time he’d traveled and fished and learned. He’d fought. He’d seen life and death. There was still much he wished to do. If he died today, could he be proud of what little he’d done?

Yes. He could be proud.

He could hear voices from the adjoining garbing room, where the Immortal Keloncoalt prepared with the aid of servants, coaches, managers, and hangers-on. He could smell bread and meat from Keloncoalt’s prefight feast. Montego had seen the schedule for the day. Their fight was nothing but a warm-up for the future champion. Keloncoalt had five other matches after this and was expected to win them all. Montego was a footnote. A young amateur without so much as a sponsor or a nickname. All alone.

Well, not quite alone.

Montego padded over to one end of the garbing room where two packages awaited him. The first was an old hatbox, crudely wrapped in brown paper. He felt a smile spring to his lips as he opened it. Within was the tin breacher, her armor freshly polished, uniform washed, the wood paint restored by someone who knew how to do it. A little note beneath it was written in a child’s sloppy scrawl.

Montego, I’ve named her Maggie Rica. I hope you don’t mind. I thought it’s your turn to have her. She’ll bring good luck to the fight. Demir says to use your head almost as much as your arm. Do to Keloncoalt what you did to Victor.

Your friend, Kizzie.

Montego ran his fingers along the little figurine, then set it on the corner of the bench, posed with both arms raised like she was cheering him on in his fight.

The second package was a long, wooden box. It smelled of rich oils, was smooth to the touch. The box alone was probably more expensive than anything he’d owned in his life. When he flipped it open, he had to swallow a gasp. Inside lay Grandma’s cudgel on a cushion of velvet. A loving restoration left it a couple inches shorter, the broken end cut off and the bulb refastened. The wood was sanded and polished, with a new wrapping around the grip and leather strap to keep it to his wrist.

Montego lifted it reverently, swallowing a lump in his throat, and gave it a few experimental swings. They’d added weight to the bulb to make up for the lost range. It felt . . . perfect.

In the box beneath the cudgel was his little rucksack made of Grandma’s semaphore flags, delivered on his request. Setting aside his cudgel, he held the rucksack up to the light of the window, thinking about Grandma for several moments before he tore it in two, then in two again, until he had a long narrow strip that he tied around his right forearm. When he was finished, he went to the back of the garbing room, where he looked at himself in the warped, full-length mirror there.

“I look like a giant baby,” he said aloud.

Behind him, the door to the garbing room opened and a voice said, “Two minutes, fighter.” The door closed before he could answer. He slipped his hand through the cord, securing his cudgel to his wrist in case he dropped it, then bent over and kissed the tin breacher on the head. “For good luck,” he whispered.

With nothing else to do, Montego went to the door, cudgel in hand, and waited. When it opened once more, he followed an arena official out directly into the sand. The official said, “No shame in going down to a one-hit from Keloncoalt. Crowd always loves it when he starts the day dirty.”

“He’s not going to one-hit me,” Montego promised.

“Sure he won’t,” the official snorted.

Montego crossed the sand to silence. The crowd didn’t even seem to notice his presence. They were too busy getting comfortable, haggling with the vendors, or just picking their noses while they waited for someone they recognized.

“Welcome first-time provincial amateur, Montego!” the announcer said lacklusterly. There was a single shrill whistle and a round of furious clapping, drawing Montego’s eyes up to a box above the bleachers where Kizzie, Demir, and Adriana cheered loudly. Kizzie put her fingers in her mouth and pulled them apart, making a face that brought a smile to Montego’s lips. No one else made a sound in his direction.

“And our Dorlani favorite,” the announcer continued, his voice rising in energy and pitch, “three-time amateur champion, the Immortal Keloncoalt!”

The crowd went wild. Men and women alike shouted their adoration with lewd promises. Flowers and coins were thrown out into the arena, quickly scooped up by runners to keep the sand clean. Keloncoalt strutted from his garbing room door, both arms lifted in the air, cudgel swinging to point toward various favorites in the audience. Compared to Montego’s baby-fat awkwardness, Keloncoalt looked like a bronzed god.

Montego searched the crowd, then the boxes, for Aelia or Jepper Dorlani. There was no sign of either of them, nor of anyone who stood out as a Dorlani. Was this really so far beneath them? Considering his treatment at their hands, Montego supposed it was.

The judge was a scrawny man of about thirty who introduced himself as Shiozak. He brought them to the center of the arena and produced a cork-lined box, withdrew two pieces of yellow forgeglass, and handed one to each of them. Montego fixed it in his one piercing, rolling his shoulders at the sudden tightening of his muscles. His body responded to the sorcery willingly, every part of him suddenly screaming to be used as his heart began to pound.

“No head, no groin,” Shiozak said, glancing in particular at Keloncoalt. “Match ends with forfeit. Fight well.”

Keloncoalt glared at Montego with genuine hatred. Montego wondered where such anger came from—Montego’s defiance the other day, or simply his low birth? It didn’t matter much, he supposed. What did Demir tell him? To use his head almost as much as his arm?

Montego grinned. “I hope it’s a good fight.”

“I’m going to snap you in two, provincial.”

On an impulse of bravado, Montego blew him a kiss, and Keloncoalt let out a growl.

Judge Shiozak held the bulbs of their cudgels together, one hand beneath and one hand over, until they’d both given him the nod of ready. Shiozak signaled to the officials box, and three quick drumbeats played out. The judge threw himself backward.

Keloncoalt fell on Montego with a flurry of blows that he could barely follow. Montego retreated beneath them, barely blocking half the strikes and missing the rest, just trying to move his cudgel to break Keloncoalt’s momentum. Strikes battered his shoulders and arms, and thrusts thumped his belly and sides, snatching his breath from him. He stumbled to the edge of the ring, realized he was about to step out of the sand, and threw himself sideways to get more room.

Keloncoalt was relentless. It wasn’t that he was faster than Montego—Montego could read the coming blows in the twitch of Keloncoalt’s muscles like wind tugging at a sail, and he was confident that he could keep up. It was simple inexperience. He didn’t know the right place to put his cudgel, he wasn’t used to moving so quickly with such powerful forgeglass, and it all showed.

A chance swing glanced off Montego’s cheek, and Judge Shiozak intervened to give Montego a few moments to recover. The spot radiated pain, and his eye half closed. He rubbed it to try to get his full field of vision back, but that seemed to make it worse. Up above him in the box, he could see Demir speaking rapidly to an older man with a bookie’s armband. Was Demir placing bets?

The judge allowed the match to resume, and Keloncoalt rushed him. Montego braced himself, ducking low, two hands on his cudgel. A strike snapped across his thigh. He took it gladly and thrust. The bulb of his cudgel took Keloncoalt right above the groin. The amateur champion let out a soft grunt, his eyes bugging out, and slammed Montego across the chin with the haft of his cudgel. The judge didn’t make a call, but Montego could sense a change in energy from the crowd.

They were no longer bored. They were intrigued.

He remembered something then—a curiosity Grandma had told him on that one trip they took together so many years ago, one of the few times she spoke of her old profession. Grandma said that the crowd was the third cudgelist, that their energy could make or break a fighter. Without the crowd it was just two idiots with sticks. The audience transformed it into an event.

Use your head.

Montego retreated to the far end of the sand to catch his breath. Keloncoalt let him, pacing the other side of the sand with pent-up energy, practically radiating frustration as he gasped, his broad chest heaving, slicked with oil and sweat.

“Missed out on the one-hit,” Montego called.

“Shut up, provincial.”

“Are you tired already? I’m finally waking up.”

Keloncoalt gave a shout and launched himself at Montego with a hop and skip to cross the sand. The attack was forecasted through a mighty windup, back and around in an axe-like swing aimed directly at Montego’s neck. Montego leaned to one side but did not defend himself, and the cudgel struck him on the left shoulder with enough force that he might have staggered if he hadn’t braced himself.

His left arm went numb. The shock of the blow lanced pain through his entire body as if he’d been run over by an ox cart, but he did not stagger and he did not cry out. He barely moved, and he fixed his face with a bored grimace. He said loudly, “Don’t hold back on my account. I barely felt that.”

He saw the change in Keloncoalt’s eyes. It was subtle, not much more than a twitch, but there was a crack in his pure confidence. The crowd grew quiet.

“Since when does Keloncoalt paw like a kitten?” someone yelled. It sounded like Kizzie. It had to be Kizzie. Laughter erupted from the audience.

Keloncoalt’s next flurry of attacks nearly did him in. Montego weathered the barrage, his cudgeling arm going numb from the effort of fending them off. He stumbled, nearly fell, and might have dropped his cudgel if a voice hadn’t come from the audience.

“Hold steady, Montego!”

That one direction, a single piece of encouragement that came from a voice he didn’t recognize—a stranger cheering him on—put fire in his girdle. Montego leaned into a strike across the thigh and grappled two-handed with Keloncoalt, their cudgels sliding together up and down the hafts until Montego gave a mighty shove and made his move.

It was like swinging a semaphore flag—open, long-armed, with a wide arc that Keloncoalt easily moved to block. Montego put everything he had behind it—his strength, his weight, his anger, his grief, his loneliness. Every ounce of power within him came down across Keloncoalt’s cudgel.

The blow went through the haft of the cudgel, snapping it in two, and hit Keloncoalt’s shoulder in the same spot Keloncoalt hit him. The amateur champion crumpled beneath it, tilting to one side and collapsing into the sand. He did not get up, and shocked silence descended on the crowd.

Montego looked down at himself. Sand and dust clung to his blood-slick skin. Every part of him was battered and cracked, throbbing with pain as if a whole army had marched over him. He swayed, using the last of his strength to raise his cudgeling arm overhead as Judge Shiozak proclaimed him a winner.

“Montego!” someone shouted. “Montego the Invincible!”

Four days passed and even with a doctor monitoring Montego’s allergy, the cureglass still hadn’t finished its job. He lay in bed with a broken collarbone, frustrated at the confinement. Lingering doubts festered in the long hours. Would his strength return? Would his shoulder ever stop hurting? Would he ever use his left arm again? Every time he voiced those doubts, Kizzie called him a big baby.

Outside of attending class at the academy, she’d barely left his side since the fight. She lay across the foot of his bed, reading aloud from a series of adventure novels. It was the only thing that kept his mind off the broken bone and the cureglass and the itching. Demir wasn’t around as much, but between tutors he moved several of his lesson books into Montego’s room, reading on the floor, half listening to Kizzie’s stories.

It was an hour before dinner, and Kizzie was right in the middle of the climactic fight between pirate kings when there was a soft knock at the door. Montego opened his mouth to turn away one of the hotel staff but fumbled the words. It wasn’t a porter or servant. It was Adriana.

She slipped inside, where she waited quietly until Kizzie reached a stopping point.

“Demir, Kizzie. Wait outside for a few minutes, please.”

The other kids retreated, Demir shooting Montego an unreadable look before he left him alone with his mother. Once they were gone the Grappo matriarch stood in contemplative silence for a few moments, looking around the room as if it was the first time she’d seen it.

“This is rather spare, isn’t it?” she asked. “I should have sent by the decorator when you first arrived. I apologize for the oversight. He’ll help you turn it into something more welcoming.”

Montego blinked back at her. It hadn’t even occurred to him to change anything about the room. “That’s very kind of you, ma’am.” He struggled to roll out of bed, grimacing at the pain of moving, but she stopped him with one hand.

“Stay comfortable. The surgeon says your collarbone should need just another couple days before you can use your left arm—a week before he clears you for cudgeling.” She came to his side, pulling down the collar of his dressing gown to look at his shoulder. “Looks like the rest of the bruises are almost healed. You took quite a beating out there.”

“Will I be bed-bound every time I fight a cudgeling match?”

“Keloncoalt broke your collarbone with one hit,” Adriana said with a chuckle. “There are few that can dish out the kind of damage he can. Your allergy will make recovery between matches a bit more trying, but this? It won’t be this bad very often.”

Montego lay his head back on the pillow. “I’m glad to hear it. Did I . . . did I kill Keloncoalt?”

Adriana shook her head. “He’s built of almost as sturdy stuff as you are. The only permanent injury is to his pride. I imagine the two of you will fight again.”

“I’ll win again,” Montego said confidently.

“Perhaps you will. The matter is settled, by the way. Aelia Dorlani has officially forgiven you for striking Jepper. The letter was condescending as piss, but that’s how it always goes with us guild-families.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“No, thank you. I have no idea how you took that beating. I have no idea how strong you really are, to finish Keloncoalt like you did. But you saved us a major pain in the ass, and I appreciate it. It wasn’t just your honor you saved. It was Grappo honor.” She paused, as if to choose her words carefully. “The Dorlani managed to keep their humiliation out of the newspapers, but it’s been all over the cudgeling circuit reports—not to mention Assembly gossip. You’ll get offers of sponsorship from all corners.”

“You really think so?” The news made Montego sit up carefully. At the moment he just hoped for the chance to fight once more. Offers of sponsorship were beyond his expectations.

Adriana sat on the edge of his bed, looking at him like that woman Maj Madoloc did weeks ago—at him, instead of through him. “I know so. You’ll have options—you can choose to train in the provinces, or overseas, or here in the capital. Coaches, managers, trainers will all want to get their claws into you.”

Montego fought off a wave of nerves. Just like that, he wasn’t a nobody anymore. He had opportunities. “What do you think I should do?”

“What do I think?” Adriana asked with a shrug. She touched his face gently, brushing a strand of his hair back behind his ear. The last person to do that was Grandma. “I’m sorry that I ignored you when you said you wanted to cudgel. My responsibilities pull my attention in a million different directions, and I thought I’d honor your grandmother’s wishes to give you an education. Beyond that I didn’t much care. That was another oversight on my part.”

She continued, “Demir says you’re quite smart. I think you should split your time between studying and cudgeling. A proper regiment fit for a thinking cudgelist. But my opinion matters little. You should do what you feel is right. As your host, it would be remiss of me to urge you in any direction that benefited myself.”

There was an unspoken but at the end of that sentence. Montego asked, “How would you benefit?”

Adriana chuckled. “You’re going to be a very good cudgelist. Anyone who watched that fight could see it. I’d like to get an offer in before everyone else: If you are willing, I’d like you to remain here with us in the Hyacinth and accept our sponsorship. The Grappo haven’t sponsored cudgelists for a long time. My father thought it beneath him, but Demir loves to watch cudgeling. He knows the intricacies better than anyone else. I think that you and he could be a potent team, and to be honest, I’m beginning to realize he needs interests outside his studies. So. Would you like us to sponsor you?”

Montego’s throat was suddenly very dry. “I’d like that very much,” he said.

“There’s more. This isn’t just a business transaction. This is a personal one.” Adriana paused, clearly considering her words. “Would you be willing to be Demir’s companion, friend, and protector?”

“Yes!”

“Would you call yourself Grappo with pride and dedicate your mind and your cudgel to the furtherance of our guild-family?”

Montego held his breath. That seemed more than just being a ward and a sponsored fighter, but he knew he wanted it the moment it left her lips. “I would.”

Adriana took on a soft, distant smile and leaned over to kiss him on the forehead. “You have no idea how happy that makes me. Demir is brilliant, but he is a tender boy in his heart. He’ll need someone strong beside him—someone that both he and I can depend on. You’re perfect, Montego. I’m honored to have you protect my son. It’ll take a few weeks to do the paperwork. You can reconsider at any time.” She walked to the door, pausing briefly to look back at him, then slipped out.

Kizzie and Demir returned a moment later, both looking excited about something Montego wasn’t sure he understood. Kizzie immediately leapt on the end of Montego’s bed. “Is it true?” she asked with a grin. “You’re going to be a Grappo?”

Her laugh was infectious and Montego found himself smiling back. “A Grappo?” he echoed. “No, no. They’re just going to sponsor my cudgeling from now on.” He looked to Demir to confirm what he said only to find the small boy giving him a sly smile. “What?” Montego asked.

“I’m not sure Mother explained it properly. Give me your right hand.”

Montego frowned at Kizzie but obeyed, letting Demir lay his palm flat on the bed. Demir fetched Montego’s quill, dabbed the ink, and then bent over Montego’s hand, pressing hard into the soft meat between thumb and forefinger. When he backed away to admire his handiwork, Montego could see a smaller version of Demir’s Grappo sigil, the inverted triangle pointing at his forefinger, cracked by lightning.

“You’re not just a ward,” Demir explained, “nor a sponsored cudgelist. Mother has invited you to join the family. You’re my brother now, Montego.” He squeezed Montego’s hand and nodded at the little sigil. “They’ll give you an official one in a couple of weeks.”

Montego lifted the back of his hand, staring at the crude markings. Brother. Family. Belonging not just as a debt paid, but as someone with value. A real cudgelist. “I don’t know what to say,” he managed breathlessly.

Demir smirked shyly at the floor. “Nothing to say. I’m late to my next argument with Maj Madoloc. Rest up. We’ll have to study tonight, and tomorrow we’ll look at managers and trainers.” With that, Demir slipped out of the room, leaving Montego alone with Kizzie.

Kizzie flipped her black hair from one side to the other, still grinning, and moved up to lay on top of the blanket in the crook of Montego’s arm. “We’re going to have so much fun,” she said, lifting her adventure novel to read the final chapter. “The three of us,” she declared, “we’re gonna conquer the world.”

Montego blinked the tears out of his eyes and squeezed Kizzie closer. She didn’t seem to mind, and began to read.

Yeah, Montego decided. We sure will.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EDITOR

Kristy S. Gilbert

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All material contained within copyright © Brian McClellan 2023

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and scenarios are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

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3

4

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Acknowledgments

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