No inn or way-house between Siu Carinal and Siu Augine was large enough to put up His Majesty King Hazerial, His Highness the Crown Prince Etianiel, Her Highness Princess Kelena, and the forty-nine Royal Thorns that escorted them.

  In villages with inns or taverns, Hazerial and Kelena were afforded the best rooms. As these were usually also the only rooms available, the rest of the party made do with common room floors and stables. On days when they were too far from a town, pavilions in the House Khinet black and gold were erected for the king and princess, while the Thorns stretched their oilcloths from the sides of the wagons and over branches.

  A third pavilion had been packed for the Crown Prince of Night, but Etian chose to rough it with the troops instead. The decision to suffer with his men made them love him all the more.

  It made Izak simultaneously admire the fool and exasperated with him. If he still had Etian’s title, Izak knew he would never have slept on the ground in the cold wet—more proof that Etian was the better choice for king. But if Etian would just sleep somewhere warm and dry, Izak could too.

  Izak rejoiced when the royal family reached the tiny holding of House Tolashne, where they would be staying for the day.

  The Lord of House Tolashne kept his single minor county afloat by charging tolls on a small slaver route that crossed through to join the king’s highway a few counties over. While they made the ride to the estate, Izak and Etian made guesses at whether His Majesty’s brief stay would bankrupt his lordship and what sort of grudge the king might have against Lord Geraldio to stop over there.

  It had become popular of late for lords to build their estates in the old style, favoring things like a squat keep and squared towers. House Tolashne’s ancestral home had been built nearly a century earlier, when the current old style had been new, and never updated. Its rundown keep was attached to a pair of ugly hexagonal towers, the easternmost of which leaned precariously. The crenelated curtain wall surrounding the castle was a narrow one, barely as wide as a man was tall. This had to be rebuilt and re-packed yearly with rocks, dirt, and refuse, as heavy rains tended to wash it out and make sections crumble.

  The property was a ludicrous enough sight on solid ground. Mirrored as it was by the glowing green ghost city overhead, it was absurd.

  The head of House Tolashne was in much better repair than his home. In his late thirties, Lord Geraldio was a tall, thickset bear of a man. Izak would have given him even odds to wrestle that mighty rustic Sketcher.

  Upon the party’s arrival, their gracious host offered the use of his bathhouse. The king selected a small group of his Thorns to attend him. The rest were directed to the swollen stream outside the shabby walls.

  While Kelena and her single Thorn enjoyed the fire-warmed, limited waters of Tolashne’s bathhouse, Etian and his Thorns joined the king’s swordsmen in the icy stream.

  At midday, a lavish feast that Tolashne almost certainly couldn’t afford was laid for the king and his notable local subjects. Izak had attended hundreds of feasts in his lifetime, usually in the seat at his father’s right hand. It was a novel change to be among the Royal Thorns looming threateningly behind the lord’s table, slowly starving to death while the royals and their noble hosts picked at their food and sipped at their wine.

  Despite his sizeable gut, Geraldio spent more time yammering about things he must have thought would impress the king than eating. Snatches of plans for improvements to the estate, ventures that would supposedly infuse the holding with gold such as constructing a pit house in the local town, and even a foolish notion about using a gray stallion from excellent stock to build stables that would one day rival House Agata’s. His lady wife cooed and nodded along as if this were stunning brilliance.

  Izak was no economic genius—until Thornfield, he had simply referred all his creditors to the royal treasury and let the coin-counters deal with his debts—but as frequently as he used to cross paths with Geraldio in the whoring houses, he doubted the new Lord of House Tolashne had the gold to fund any of his ambitious schemes.

  The former Lord Tolashne, Izak heard while catching up on the court gossip from his father’s older Thorns, had relinquished the title to Geraldio the year before, supposedly on the grounds that the old man wasn’t fit any longer to govern.

  ‘Unfit to govern,’ Izak quickly learned, meant ‘off his brain with syphilis.’ The former lord made an appearance an hour into the feast to snatch a plate of food from one of the local landowners. He growled through his rotting, ulcerated face at anyone who looked his way, then disappeared down a side corridor. The distinct odor of kennels disappeared with him.

  “I know you would never stoop to touching a dirter woman,” Izak remarked to Alaan, who was posted beside him, “but if something awful should happen to your twisted pirate convictions while we’re lodging in House Tolashne and you can’t help yourself, be careful what you bed. Admittedly, I’m somewhat desperate myself, but after seeing that, I think I’ll wait for our next stop.”

  The pirate didn’t lift his furious gray-green glare from where Kelena sat perched like a tiny, frightened bird between Etian and Hazerial.

  “Your uniform has certainly fared better than the rest of ours on this trip,” Izak said, plucked at the cuff of Alaan’s jacket.

  The pirate snatched his arm away. His uniform was damp but otherwise spotless. Enslaved against his will or not, the pirate would never allow for slovenliness.

  “Digging out the carriage or riding with His Majesty?” Izak pretended to consider. “To tell the truth, I can’t say which one is worse. On the one hand, you’re subjected to cold disgusting filth, and on the other you’re suffering through rain and mud.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Not a flicker of acknowledgement.

  At the back of Alaan’s stiff collar, his sandy hair hung in short dark spikes, still wet from the bath; at the front, his beard was trimmed and orderly. The pirate was darker than Izak or any other Child of Night, from years baking in the bright sun on a ship, but a tinge of warmth clung to his skin.

  “How was the bathhouse? The stream outside the walls still has chunks of ice flowing through it, in case you were wondering. Nearly turned me inside out. Poor Faren will probably never get the rest of his anatomy back.”

  Nothing.

  As far as Izak could tell, Alaan hadn’t spoken since leaving Thornfield. The occasional barked order for someone to get away from the princess or die; otherwise, the pirate seethed in silence.

  With Izak’s duties as commander and his fondness for avoiding his father whenever possible, he hadn’t had much leisure time to pry conversation from his friend. Now that an opportunity had presented itself, however, he didn’t intend to let it pass.

  Izak sighed. “Need I remind you that you swore two unnamed favors to me? I don’t want to turn in one to force you talk to me again, but if that’s what it takes—”

  “You would throw away an asset without thought to its strategic value,” Alaan growled.

  Izak couldn’t help the grin that tugged at his lips. “Assets are made to be squandered.”

  “Your supposed contempt for resources does not bear out. During the grafting, you had the opportunity to throw away my oaths and instead you preserved them.”

  “I preserved your life, you ungrateful savage. Your plan to kill the king was doomed before it began. I tried to tell you that for three years and you wouldn’t listen. I don’t know what Eketra-blessed nonsense my father had planned for you or for Kelena, but I know the thornknife ritual played out in such a way that only she can command you now, and I won’t apologize for that.”

  Of course, the grafting also prevented Alaan from ever wielding a sword against anyone in Kelena’s direct bloodline, descendent or forebear, unless she was in immediate danger from that relative. No doubt the pirate couldn’t see past that consequence of his magical enslavement. He was forever locked away from redeeming his precious blood debt by killing Hazerial.

  But he was alive.

  If Izak could have stolen a moment alone with his friend, he would have told Alaan of Etian’s insane plan to kill their father and take the throne. But more than likely Alaan would still consider the debt unpaid if the sword through Hazerial’s heart came from anyone but a pirate.

  Just as well. Etian’s scheme had no chance of success, for the same reason as Alaan’s thirst for revenge could never be satisfied—Izak couldn’t wield the royal blood magic, Loss, or any other weapon against his father unless Hazerial directly attacked Etian. And if Hazerial was attacking, then Etian was already dead and Izak had either preceded him in death or was busy contending with a soul shattered by the broken grafting.

  “Besides,” Izak admitted in a low voice, “you’re the only man I trust with my sister.”

  Alaan’s glare cut sidelong at him.

  “Kelena’s never had anyone she could rely on,” Izak said. Even the big brother who claimed to love her had abandoned her to that vile witch of a mother when he was sent to Thornfield. “This family is a nest of vipers, all biting and slithering over one another. But I know I can count on you to protect her.”

  More stony silence.

  Izak chuckled and looked out over the dilapidated feasting hall. “Pretty dismal when a pirate savage is the only man you can trust, isn’t it?”

  ***

  Though the princess hardly ate a bite, she remained at the table, cowering between her dirter brother and the blood-drinking monster who had destroyed Alaan’s tribe.

  Alaan stood at attention along the wall behind her, in that heightened state of readiness that preceded combat, relaxed yet primed to attack at the slightest twitch. He knew the threat was unlikely, but the magical chains Izak had shackled him with insisted the princess was in danger, just as they insisted that it was Alaan’s duty—his need—to protect this cringing excuse for a woman.

  The princess feared everything. Every move her monster of a father made, every word he said, left her trembling. If her brother the crown prince was within sight, a strange, petrified buzzing filled her until she could hardly think. Mention of her mother sent her into a panic of racing heartbeats, and word of her people’s strong gods wiped her mind blank with fear.

  Even Alaan, who had been magically enslaved to protect her and could do her no harm if he wished to, frightened her. Through the grafting, he felt her shrinking away from his rage.

  He was still Ocean Rover enough to maintain his changeless external expression—he didn’t wear his emotions on his face for the world to see, like the dirters did—but whenever the king looked him in the eye and smiled, Alaan felt a fury so keen that it caused physical pain. He longed to plunge his swordbreaker into the monster’s heart so desperately that the restrictive hold of the grafting made him sick.

  At midday, the dirter king rose to retire, and the frightened princess did the same.

  A House Tolashne attendant showed Her Highness to her chambers. Wordlessly, Alaan followed, unable to let her out of his sight.

  The princess was quartered across a narrow corridor from the king. On the opposite side of the hall, a pair of Royal Thorns stood guard over the monster’s door, while the rest followed him inside.

  No sign of where the crown prince or Izak’s unit would spend the night, which afforded the princess a minor relief.

  Alaan sent the attendant away and combed the princess’s bedchamber for danger. He searched in, behind, and under any furnishings large enough to conceal an assailant as thoroughly as if he were inspecting a new raed ship. Then, at the grafting’s demand, he went over everything a second time, searching for more insidious treacheries like poisoned needles or deadly spiders.

  While he worked, a servant’s meal of plain coarse bread, meat, and cheese was brought up. Alaan set it aside and continued his task.

  At Thornfield, they had learned that the smallest advisable force of Thorns was three. In that case, two could stand guard over their master while the third slept. The added benefit was that, with every man grafted, the burden of the grafting lessened. Accounts they had read or heard of Thorns grafted alone told of swordsmen who broke under the constant strain.

  Alaan was not going to be one of those men. After assuring that the main chamber was devoid of threats, he pushed the princess’s bed against the side door that led to a tiny bathing chamber, then built up the fire in the hearth to stop the unlikely possibility of ingress through the chimney. Thankfully, there were no windows; Alaan would not have been able to close his eyes in a room with casements.

  When he was satisfied that he would be able to sleep that day, Alaan barred the door to the hallway and ate leaning against it. Once the princess fell asleep, he would stretch out in front of the portal and rest.

  Throughout the fortification process, the princess had stood silently in the center of the room, as still as stone. Her head stayed down while Alaan worked, her bone-white face hidden in a curtain of black ringlets, her hands clasped, her dark eyes fixed on the rug just in front of her slippers.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to the floor when he had finished securing her room.

  They were the only words she ever spoke to him, repeated in that same frightened whisper every day when he had finished his rounds.

  Unable to speak without conveying the contempt she must already feel through the grafting, Alaan said nothing.