28. Midnight
Midnight
Night in the Stone Yard was never truly quiet. It had the restless energy of two hundred young fighters dreaming of blood and steel, and sleep wouldn’t come no matter how I courted it.
I lay on my cot, listening to Maise’s steady breathing, to Perrin’s soft murmurs as he chased something in his dreams, to Grit’s absolute stillness broken only by the occasional snore.
My new armor rested on the rack, fresh with oil.
The spear leaned beside it, a familiar comfort, but tonight wasn’t for the spear.
I rose without a sound, movements learned from years of camp life where noise meant death. I strapped on my sword and added the long dagger Grit had shown me how to use, tucking it into the small of my back. A man with one weapon was a specialist. A man with two was a survivor.
I knew where I was going before I’d finished lacing my boots. Not instinct, exactly, but the knowledge that came from understanding how fighters thought. Ygritte took a public loss today, made to kneel and made to yield, and that kind of humiliation didn’t sit quiet in the gut. It burned.
I found her in the training yard, alone, working through sword forms with vicious intensity.
Each cut sliced through the air as if she was trying to murder someone who wasn’t there.
Probably me. Sweat soaked through her shirt and her footwork was as close to perfect as it got. She’d been at this for a while .
The smart move was to leave. Let her burn out her rage and keep her problems to herself. But I recognized the way she moved, the same desperate need to be better, stronger, more than what birth made us.
The Red Gale lived on that feeling.
I stepped into the yard.
Her sword whipped around before I’d made it five paces, pointed at my throat. Her face was flushed, eyes wild, chest heaving. For a moment I thought she might actually run me through.
“Go,” she snarled. “Just get the fuck away.”
I didn’t move. “No.”
“I heard you.” I kept my hands away from my weapons. “But you’re dropping your shoulder on the transition. The rising cut after the thrust.”
Her sword trembled. I could see her fighting between pride and rage, between the need to be alone and the need to be better. The trembling stopped and she lowered the blade slowly.
“Show me,” she said, voice rough.
I drew my sword and moved through the same combination she’d been practicing. “Here. See? When you transition from the thrust to the rising cut, your shoulder telegraphs it.”
She watched with the intensity of someone trying to memorize it on the first pass. Then she tried it, slower, feeling for the flaw. Her face twisted when she found it.
“Shit.” The word came out tired more than angry. “How long?”
“Probably always. Just more noticeable when you’re tired or angry.”
She gave me a look that could peel paint. “I’m not angry.”
“Right. That’s why you’re out here at midnight trying to kill the air. ”
“Maybe I just like practicing.” But the lie was half-hearted, and she went back to the form, working to correct the shoulder drop.
After a dozen repetitions, she stopped, breathing hard. “Why are you really here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d practice.” I shrugged. “Didn’t expect company.”
“Liar.” She wiped sweat from her eyes. “You came to gloat. See the street trash working late because she knows she’ll never be good enough.”
“That what you think you are? Street trash?”
“That’s what I am.” She started the form again, each movement sharp with barely controlled violence. “No fancy name. No noble father to acknowledge me. Just another bastard who got lucky.”
“You’re de Blaise blood. Has to be, or you wouldn’t be here.”
She laughed, ugly and short. “Yeah? Whose? Far as I know, my mother scrubbed floors in the barracks. Could’ve been any soldier with wine in his belly and an itch to scratch.”
Her next cut came so hard it would’ve shattered bone if she’d hit anything solid. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”
She was right. Knowing which lord or soldier spent a night with her mother wouldn’t change a thing. Wouldn’t make her legitimate. Wouldn’t erase the years before she got here.
“That why you killed your teammate?” I asked.
For a heartbeat I thought she might come at me. Then she lowered the blade and her face went blank.
“Smart boy,” she said. “Most people pretend they didn’t see it.”
Boy. She called me boy. I’d lived and died before she was born, and she called me boy .
“I was watching.”
“Happens.” She cleaned the blade along her sleeve. “Weak little shit who cried every night. He didn’t know the movements, and the others thought he did. I knew better. Can’t be let down by somebody already dead.”
The words hit, not because they shocked me, because I’d seen plenty of hard choices made for survival, but because of how easily she said them. Like discussing the weather.
“You could’ve carried him.”
“For how long?” She started the form again, each movement controlled and precise. “Until the grubsnouts? Until the Butcher’s Sow? Better he died quick than screaming while something ate him alive.”
She wasn’t wrong. The weak ones always died first in real combat. But her voice carried a tightness, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as me.
“What was his name?”
The question stopped her mid-swing. For a moment the armor she wore, the bravado and the hard edges, dropped away, and I saw what lived underneath.
“Jackson.” The name came out quiet. “He was ten.”
Ten. Young enough to make it worse. I remembered him vaguely, small and always hanging back during drills, the kind who made himself invisible to avoid attention.
“You knew him before the trial,” I said.
“So yes, I killed him. And I’d do it again, because dead friends can’t betray you when things get ugly. The only person you can trust in this place is yourself. ”
I thought of Maise, Perrin, Grit. The oath we swore to watch each other’s backs.
“I made a choice.” She met my eyes without flinching. “He was going to break. Run screaming into the creatures, or freeze up when we needed him to fight. Either way, dead weight that would’ve dragged the rest of us down. I couldn’t count on him. That simple.”
I nodded. It was a calculation I understood. The Red Gale had made similar calls in the field. Mercy got good soldiers killed.
“Everyone saw you do it,” I pointed out.
“Good. Sent a message.” She started cleaning her blade with methodical strokes. “My team knew I’d cut anyone who endangered the rest. Made them fight harder, think clearer. That’s why we lasted as long as we did.”
“Until today.”
“Until today.” The admission came out flat. “Your team was better. You were better.” She sheathed the sword with a sharp click. “Even if you fight like a coward with that spear.”
“Why tell me this?”
“Because you asked a direct question, and because you’re not horrified.” She planted her fist on her hip. “Anyone else would be backing away right now, making excuses to leave. But you’re standing there like killing your own people is just another thing to do when it’s needed.”
She was reading me correctly. The Red Gale had put knives in the backs of more than one ally who’d turned or broken at the wrong moment. Different circumstances, same rationale.
“Maybe it is,” I said .
“Yeah.” A hard grin cut across her face. “That’s what I thought. You’ve got that look.”
She hefted her sword, testing the balance. “So here’s my question, Danarre de Blaise. What’s a thirteen-year-old bastard doing with the eyes of a killer?”
The question was hard to answer. I could lie, and she might even believe it. Instead, I met her stare.
“Same thing a thirteen-year-old bastard needs in her gut to cut down somebody who trusted her.”
Ygritte turned away. “Fair.”
“We both know things we shouldn’t. Do things most wouldn’t.” I shifted my weight, hand resting near my sword but not on it. “Question is whether that makes us enemies or useful to each other.”
“Useful like what?”
“People who understand each other.”
She considered this, head tilted. “What do we understand?”
“That survival isn’t pretty. That you have to make choices that leave stains.” I paused. “That the strong take what they want, and the weak get buried. That’s how the world turns.”
She studied me, and her gaze carried too much weight for her age. “How do you know that?”
Because I’d been hungry enough to kill for bread. Because I’d done worse than she had, just with more years to justify it. But I couldn’t tell her that.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said instead. “What matters is what comes next.”
“Next?” She let out a short laugh. “Next is tomorrow. Then the day after. Surviving until they find a reason to cull us.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s just dying slow. ”
“Better than dying fast.” But there was hunger in her voice, a need for more than just the next meal.
I moved into a guard position. “Want to spar? For real this time. No anger, no grudges. Just steel and skill.”
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Why would you want that?”
“Because you’re good,” I said. “Better than most here. And getting better by working alone at midnight, which tells me everything I need to know about your dedication.”
“What’s it worth?” She was already shifting into stance, body responding even as her mind questioned.
“Worth investing in.” I began circling slowly. “Sooner than you’d think, we’ll be the ones sent on real missions. Outside the walls. Fighting enemies that actually matter.”
“If we live that long.”
“I plan to. Question is whether you do too.”
She attacked without warning. A probing thrust tested my defense. I parried, countered, and we fell into the rhythm of real combat, not the desperate fury of our earlier fight, but the careful exchange of fighters learning each other’s measure.
She was good. Very good. Her style was unorthodox, mixing formal training with street brutality in ways that worked. She targeted joints and tendons, went for disabling wounds over killing blows.
We traded combinations until the sweat ran cold on our skin, then broke apart, both breathing hard. Her expression had shifted during the spar. Friendship was beyond her, but I could read respect in the way she held her blade at rest instead of guard, and that was enough .
“That thing you do,” she said, gesturing at me. “The speed burst. What is it?”
I touched the spot between my shoulders where the Brand burned. “Awakened potential. Knight of Swords. Happened during the Palisade.”
“Can you teach it?”
“Doesn’t work like that. But you might get your own someday.” I rolled my shoulders, working out the ache. “You’re a bastard of the line too, even if nobody knows whose.”
Her jaw tightened. “Doesn’t matter.”
The words were final, closing that door. She’d spent too long not knowing to start caring now.
“You’ll awaken one though,” I said. “I can feel it in how you fight.”
She wiped sweat from her blade. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because you’re of the blood. It’ll come.”
She glanced down, then away. “What kind?”
I thought about the cards Hel showed me, the weight of each image. What would fit a girl who killed her own to better position herself?
“The Devil, maybe. Or the Tower.” The words felt right as I said them. “Cards that break things down. Destroy what needs destroying, even when it hurts.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Those sound like curses, not blessings.”
“Depends on how you use them.” I started walking toward the barracks. “The Devil’s card isn’t about evil. It’s about chains. Breaking them, or learning to live with them. Sometimes destroying is the only way to build anything better.”
“And if I don’t want to destroy things? ”
I glanced back. “Then you’ll die young. This world doesn’t let people like us stay clean.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked suddenly. “Really. Not the pretty words about missions and futures. Why?”
I considered lying, but she’d know. Street survivors always did.
“Because when they start sending us outside the walls, I want the best fighters possible watching my back.” I met her eyes directly. “You’re a killer. That’s fine. I can work with killers.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“I’m not a good person,” she said.
“I know. Neither am I.” The admission came easier than expected. “Good people don’t survive this place, much less this world. But useful people? Skilled people? They might just make it.”
She sheathed her sword slowly. “This doesn’t make us friends.”
“Don’t need friends. Need allies.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Friends you trust with your feelings. Allies you trust with your back.” I let that sit. “One’s a lot more practical than the other.”
She actually smiled at that, a sharp and jagged thing, more threat than warmth, but real.
“Fine. Allies. For now.” She started toward the barracks, then paused. “That shoulder thing. You’ll show me how to fix it?”
“Yes, but not tonight.”
She turned back. “How do you know I won’t kill you the first chance I get? ”
I gestured at the empty yard around us. “You mean like right now? Middle of the night, no witnesses, me turning my back to you half a dozen times during our spar?”
She stopped walking and considered that.
“Point taken.” Her voice carried grudging respect. “But why trust me at all?”
I laughed. “I don’t.”
◇ ◆ ◇
We parted ways at the barracks entrance. She headed down to the lower floors while I climbed to my team’s room. Everyone still slept, unaware of midnight alliances being forged in empty training yards.
I settled back onto my cot as exhaustion finally caught up with me.
Tomorrow brought politics and careful words around Henrik’s table.
But tonight I might’ve turned an enemy into an asset, not a friend, because Ygritte was too sharp for that, too broken in ways that mattered, but someone who’d fight beside me when the steel came out. That was enough for now.
I closed my eyes and let exhaustion pull me under. In my dreams I was the Red Gale again, spear in hand, my Wolves at my back. But when morning came I’d wake as Danarre de Blaise, bastard son, and the distance between those two selves grew smaller every day.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: de Blaise Estate, Stone Yard
「Knight of Swords」 — Burning
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleepin g
Active Charge: The trail leads to the Temple’s highest seat.
The vessel recruits the way his first life recruited. Find the ones who already bite, and give them a better reason to use their teeth. Midnight deals in dark yards.