11. Blood Ties
Blood Ties
Seven years old and I could finally hold a real blade without my wrists shaking.
The practice sword sat heavy in my grip as I worked through the morning forms, steel flashing dull gray with each sweep and thrust. The blade was iron-cored rather than solid steel, a concession to my age and size, but the balance was true and the edge sharp enough to draw blood from careless fingers.
I’d cut myself twice this week alone, learning the difference between wood and metal.
Around me the training yard held its usual noise of wooden clatter and shouted corrections.
Thirty-eight children ranging from five to twelve winters moved through their morning drills, some with practice weapons and some with empty hands, all of them learning the fundamental truth of this place: steel didn’t care how old you were.
I’d carved out a corner near the armory where the older children didn’t bother me anymore.
They learned that lesson a few seasons back when I opened a twelve-year-old’s cheek to the bone for trying to take my breakfast. The scar still showed, a thin white line from his jaw to his ear, and the other children pointed to it when they thought I couldn’t see.
A reminder of what happened when you underestimated the bastard from the backhouse.
The morning air carried the smell of autumn decay and woodsmoke from the kitchens.
Leaves had started to fall from the oaks along the outer wall, carpeting the ground in orange and brown, and the wind carried the promise of the hard winter to come.
My breath misted white with each exhale, but the exertion kept the cold at bay.
Rulfen watched from the instructor’s platform, his scarred face unreadable as always.
He’d been training fighters for longer than I’d been alive in this body, and his eye missed nothing.
The cane in his hand was more than a walking aid.
I’d seen him use it to correct posture, break bad habits, and on one memorable occasion, knock an overconfident fourteen-year-old unconscious for talking back.
His cane tapped a steady rhythm against the wooden rail, counting beats that only he could hear.
When my footwork slipped a half-inch out of position, the tapping stopped.
I corrected the stance before he could call it out. The tapping resumed. That was the game we played, Rulfen and I. He watched for mistakes and I tried not to make them. In four years of training, he’d only had to use the cane on me twice. Both times I deserved it, and both times I learned.
Maise worked the heavy bag twenty paces to my left, her flame-red hair plastered to her skull with sweat.
Each punch landed with the meaty thwack of someone who’d stopped caring about form and started caring about damage.
The canvas was stained dark with old blood and older sweat.
The chain holding it to the beam creaked with every impact.
She’d been at it for an hour now, longer than any instructor would require, driving her fists into stuffed canvas until her knuckles split and bled.
The wrappings around her hands were soaked through, red showing through white, but she didn’t stop.
I didn’t know what happened in the kitchens last night, and she hadn’t told me. I hadn’t asked. But the heavy bag was taking the punishment that someone else probably deserved. I knew better than to get between Maise and her anger.
Grit appeared beside me without sound, which was a trick I still hadn’t figured out despite watching him do it since we were five. One moment the space was empty and the next moment he was there, dark eyes tracking something across the yard.
“Perrin says trouble,” he murmured, voice pitched below the noise of training.
That was more words than Grit usually spent in an entire day. I finished the current sequence before lowering my blade, using the motion to scan the yard without appearing to scan anything.
Six older boys clustered near the well on the far side, ranging from twelve to fourteen winters.
I recognized most of them from the senior bastard barracks, the ones who’d survived long enough to start thinking about their futures.
Torvald led them, a thick-necked brute whose father was supposedly some minor lordling from the western reaches.
His mother was a camp follower who died of fever before he could walk, which meant he had noble blood but no noble protection.
That made him dangerous, because hungry boys with something to prove always were.
They weren’t looking at me, and that’s how I knew they were watching.
“What kind?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“The organized kind.”
Lady Meresin. It had to be. Henrik’s wife had tried twice now to remove me from the succession, first with the servant girl in the nursery and then with Varen in the weapons shed.
Both times Henrik’s intervention saved me, and both times she learned nothing except patience.
Now she’d gotten clever. No more single assassins who could be traced back to her influence.
No more obvious attacks that Henrik could intercept before they landed.
This time she’d weaponized the very system that was supposed to be culling us.
Bastards killing bastards happened all the time, and nobody asked questions when the weak disappeared.
“Tonight,” Grit said. “The night exercise.”
Of course. Rulfen announced this morning that the junior cohort would be running a night navigation drill in the forest east of the estate.
No torches, no instructors, just moonlight and whatever skills we’d managed to acquire.
It was meant to teach us self-reliance. It was also the perfect opportunity to make a seven-year-old disappear into the woods forever.
I resumed my forms, letting the familiar movements buy me time to think.
Torvald and his crew had numbers, size, and reach.
In a straight fight they’d break me apart before I could land a single blow.
Running wasn’t an option because the forest was their territory more than mine, and they knew every hiding spot between here and the river.
“Tell Perrin to find out who they’ve been talking to,” I said between strikes. “Names, times, anything he can get without being noticed.”
Grit nodded once and vanished back into the crowd of training children.
I kept working the forms until my shoulders burned and my grip grew slick with sweat.
Across the yard, Maise finally stopped punishing the heavy bag.
Her knuckles were raw meat now, blood dripping onto packed earth, but her eyes had cleared of whatever fury drove her here.
She caught me watching and crossed the yard with the easy stride of someone who didn’t know how to look small.
“You’ve got that face,” she said.
“What face?”
“The one where you’re counting bodies.” She flexed her ruined hands, wincing at the pull of split skin. “Whose bodies are we counting?”
I told her about Torvald, about the organized threat, about what tonight might bring.
Her expression didn’t change, but her jaw tightened. The fury that was drowning in the heavy bag found a new target.
“Six of them,” she said. “Four of us.”
“You’re not fighting with those hands, so it’s actually three.”
“The hell I’m not fighting with these hands.”
“You can barely make a fist, and one good punch will tear those knuckles open to the bone.” I sheathed my practice sword and faced her fully. “I need you thinking, not bleeding out in the first exchange.”
“Since when do you give me orders?”
“Since right now.” I held her gaze until she looked away, which took longer than it should. “We’re not winning this with strength because we don’t have enough. We need to make them pay more than we’re worth.”
Maise chewed on that for a moment, pride warring with practicality. She nodded, a single sharp jerk of her chin.
“Fine. But if they put you down, I’m killing as many as I can reach before they stop me.”
“That’s the idea.”
◇ ◆ ◇
Perrin found us at midday mess, sliding onto the bench across from me with a bowl of barley stew he definitely didn’t get through legitimate channels. The kitchen staff stopped tracking his movements months ago because it was easier than trying to catch him.
“Got names,” he said between bites. “Torvald’s the face, but Cren’s the one doing the organizing. Smart bastard, literally. His mother was some merchant’s daughter who got too friendly with a de Blaise cousin.”
“Who’s paying them?”
“Can’t trace it directly.” Perrin tore a chunk of bread and used it to soak up the last of his stew. “But one of the laundry girls heard Cren talking about moving to the acknowledged barracks after tonight. Said someone promised him a sponsor if he handled a problem in the junior cohort.”
“A problem.” Maise’s voice was flat.
“That’s what he called it. Said the problem’s been causing headaches for important people and needs to go away quietly.” Perrin glanced at me. “You’re the headache, in case that wasn’t clear.”
“I gathered.”
Grit appeared at the end of the bench, somehow already holding a bowl he must have acquired between one blink and the next. He ate in silence while the rest of us talked, but his eyes tracked the room with patient attention.
“Six of them, confirmed,” Perrin continued. “Torvald, Cren, and four others whose names don’t matter because they’ll do whatever Torvald tells them. They’re planning to separate you during the navigation exercise and handle things away from the group.”
“How do you know the plan?”
Perrin grinned, showing crooked teeth. “Cren talks in his sleep, and his bunkmate owes me for that thing with the quartermaster’s keys.”