The clang made Soren's eardrum buckle. He saw the trainer's smirk, then the instant blanch in Rhain's face as the practice blade dug an angry stripe above his collarbone.
Soren's forearms buzzed from the hit; he let go, barely in time, and the training sword clattered to the ground.
It left behind a raw silence, scuffed only by Rhain's shallow breathing and the hot, rotten scent of blood where the wooden blade had caught exposed skin.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Rhain dropped to a knee, hand pressed flat to the wound, blood seeping through the thin weave. Tavren hooted, mock-anguished, "That's three for gutterboy!" and kicked a clump of sand at Glen, who didn't bother to dodge it.
The instructor ignored the lot, already bending to inspect the mess Soren had made of the other boy's shoulder.
Soren's own hand wouldn't stop trembling. Not with fear, he recognized the stutter in the tendon as adrenaline, the way back-alley brawls always left him vibrating, even after the threat was gone.
The yard was a haze of bright sun and the coppery perfume of sweat, and the eyes of the other boys bunched together at the edge of the ring like crows scenting a meal.
The instructor pressed hard against Rhain's shoulder, drawing a wince. Then he snapped his fingers at Soren. "Clean it."
There was no nurse on duty for the Choosing stock. Soren hustled, found a crust of cloth in the bucket by the well, and dabbed at the trickle.
Rhain stared straight ahead, lips pressed fine as wire. His voice came out flat and formal: "Good match, Soren."
The words hit like a slap. Soren had never heard this boy, bred for silk, not blood, speak with something so close to respect.
He nodded, too clumsy for speech, and kept at the work. The memory kept repeating: the catch, the pivot, the exposed line in Rhain's stance.
Not instinct, he was sure of it. He'd seen it in the instant before the move. Seen it from behind someone else's face.
Valenna, in his mind's eye, unspooling a slow, perfect sneer.
"You see? It's prediction. Not reaction. The body learns to hunt the pattern, then break it."
He tried not to let the others notice his shaking.
—
At supper, Tavren found him at the end of the mess hall bench, bowl in one hand and a sliver of bread in the other.
"Word travels, Soren," he said, voice pitched low but carrying. "Heard you almost put Rhain in the grave." Tavren grinned, lips glossy with stew fat. "Couldn't happen to a finer line."
Soren stabbed at his own bowl, fighting the urge to look at Rhain, who sat across the aisle with a bloodstained bandage and an entourage of noble rejects.
None of them met Soren's gaze. It wasn't hate, they'd moved past that, into a space where he worried more about being the last one alive than being liked.
Tavren slurped, then rapped a knuckle on the table. "You do it on purpose, or did some old ghost finally show you a new trick?"
Soren's hand tensed around the food. He didn't answer.
Tavren reached out and lowered his voice to a smoke-thread: "No shame in it. I seen the shake. That's what happens, sometimes." He shot Soren a look, more fox than wolf. "You feel it? Or just hear someone?"
Soren risked a glance and saw that Tavren's own hands were busy shredding crust, piece by piece, into smaller and smaller morsels.
Not nerves, but habit. Every muscle in Tavren's arms mapped along the grain of violence, but the rest of him was a coil waiting for a reason not to spring.
Soren cleared his throat. "I don't exactly know what you mean…some movements just come to me naturally. It's still weird even for me."
Tavren shrugged, unconcerned. "You get used to it. Some would kill to have your edge." He eyed Soren's left hand, where a thin blue line of bruise ran from knuckle to wrist. "Most here would kill to have your pain go to the right people."
Soren didn't want to admit how good it had felt, even for a heartbeat, to land something that mattered.
A clang at the front of the hall sent ripples down both benches.
The instructor, his name still a blank in Soren's memory, but his presence undeniable, stood at the head, arms folded into the architecture of his chest. "Tomorrow is the test. You know what waits for you. If you piss it, you're gone."
Glen spat into his stew, missing the bowl entirely. "That's the only ceremony they care about," Tavren muttered.
Soren's right hand still tingled.
—
Night brought the familiar ritual. The bunkhouse stank with the cumulative memory of a dozen boys who all dreamed of home and woke to bruise. Soren lay on his back, eyes open, waiting for the ceiling's geometry to shift into something more than darkness.
"Valenna," he whispered, not even moving his lips.
This time the answer was not a voice, but sensation: the sudden, intrusive knowledge of angles, the torque of a shoulder locked, the way a wrist could be bent just so to make someone drop a blade.
He saw the memory, then became it: Valenna, younger than he'd ever glimpsed her, pacing after a battle, blood pooling between the flagstones, her hands unable to release the sword even after the threat had passed.
The memory's weight was intoxicating, almost giddy.
She had killed someone important, but the satisfaction in her bones was immediately at war with the dread. In the memory, she unwrapped a strip of linen, revealing a broken tooth, her own, he realized, knocked loose mid-fight.
She laughed, spat it onto the tile, then rammed her sword point-down through a corpse's hand, pinning it to the ground as a warning.
Soren blinked, the vision fragmenting into the barracks' blackness and the sound of Glen snoring three bunks away. His own mouth felt wet, and he tasted copper.
"More?" Valenna's voice, quiet now, not in his ears but his jaw. "You want to know why it gets easier?"
He barely managed to murmur: "Why?"
"Because you're not fighting for anything but the next hour of breath. That makes the pattern easier to see."
He squeezed the rag-wrapped shard in his palm. The warmth was gone, but the pulse had returned, steady and insistent.
He slept, the echo of her laughter carrying him further than he had planned.
—
Test day. The yard was empty at first bell, the cold raw enough to turn exhalations into instant crystals. Soren reported to the line, expecting half the boys to be gone.
Instead, they were all present; even Glen's wrist had been set and wrapped in greasy wool. The instructor herded them, not to the practice ring, but toward the east wall, where a shallow pit had been dug, "the arena," as rumors styled it.
Each recruit would fight in public, one-on-one, under the watch of three men in blue-gray tunics and a single, severe-faced woman with a notepad and no gloves. Her hands were so red they looked tattooed.
Soren drew an early match against Glen. Tavren, bouncing in place, whispered, "You owe him a rematch. Don't waste it."
The pit was ringed with fresh hay to soak the blood. Soren stepped in, trying not to watch the faces of the men above him.
Glen entered from the opposite end, pausing to hitch up his sleeve and spit, hard, onto the ground.
The instructor called out, "Intent only." A warning.
Soren focused on the sand, memorizing where the lines would trip him. Glen circled, sword low, using the left hand for balance.
He was bigger, but slower, and his face already shone with a hot, urgent sweat.
The opening exchange was all noise and waste: Glen swung with his right, overshot, and Soren ducked, letting the blade pass close enough to shear a lock of his hair.
The next pass, Soren parried, but the collision vibrated up his arm, almost dislodging his own grip.
Valenna: "Watch the feet. Don't get greedy."
He did as told. Glen advanced, feinted left, then lunged. Soren saw the telegraph in the way Glen's hips set.
He sidestepped, using the memory of Valenna's pivot, and at the last instant, swept Glen's knee with a kick. Glen tumbled forward, hitting the dirt hard, sword scraping up a spray of sand.
Soren hesitated. For a beat too long. Glen rolled and grabbed Soren's ankle, trying to pull him down. Soren let himself fall backward, used the momentum to spin, and brought the heel of his hand against the side of Glen's head, a move he'd never practiced, but which landed with sickening accuracy.
Glen went out cold. Soren hovered above him, panting, half-certain he had killed him.
There was a lull, then the woman with the red hands called, "Next."
They dragged Glen to the side. He was breathing, and after a minute, started cursing with cleverness. Soren watched, almost detached, as his own hands curled into fists.
Tavren's fight was briefer: a fistful of sand to his opponent's eyes, followed by a headbutt that drew gasps from the gallery.
By noon, a half-dozen boys had been dismissed to the benches, or to the medic. Soren advanced, round after round, the movements ever more familiar, the memory-overlay of Valenna's craft now less an intrusion and more a habit. He didn't speak, didn't make a show of the pain or the pleasure. He just won.
In the final round Tavren met Soren at the edge of the pit with a wide, sunlit smile. He looked like a man who had already accepted the ending.
"Last try, gutter," Tavren said, mock reverent. "Winner gets…" he glanced at the instructor, then back, eyebrows raised, "everything."
Soren flexed his fingers. The shard against his chest beat fast enough to ache.
They squared off. Tavren moved with more care now, conserving every inch of his body.
He taunted, faked a left, then came in right, but Soren parried with ease. Not his skill; Valenna's. He felt the shame, then the satisfaction.
The fight tilted, not with a blow, but when Tavren caught Soren's eye and grinned, full of teeth and something not hate.
The city's cruelty, Soren saw, was only ever a mask: underneath, there was just the will to stay in the ring longer than the odds might allow.
Tavren made a show of the next move, the overhand swing so telegraphed that even the crowd murmured.
Soren ducked, wrenched Tavren's wrist, and heard the wood of Tavren's practice blade splinter. In the next instant, Soren's own blade was at Tavren's throat.
There was a silence, broken quickly by the woman's voice:
"Victor: Soren Thorne."
The name sparked in his skull, foreign and final. He tried to let go of the sword, but his hands wouldn't release.