“Morning, half-blood,” a woman called. “I thought you’d be practicing for tomorrow’s trial.”
Anskar had been too preoccupied to notice the three novices sitting on a bench nearby: Sareya, a red-skinned Niyandrian who’d been brought to the Burg as a child; and Clenna and her twin brother Rhett, from Nagorn City on the east coast of the mainland—Nagorn City, where it was said they had yet to invent sewers. The twins were both hard as nails, Clenna more so than Rhett. Always looking for a fight. Always trouble. That either of them had come so far in their training was a wonder. Sometimes Anskar thought the Order placed more emphasis on fighting ability than on the good conduct expected of a knight.
What the twins were doing with Sareya was anyone’s guess. He’d never had the impression they were friends. The fact that they all had their eyes on him only served to increase the awkwardness he always felt around Sareya. She seemed to see it as her life’s work to torment him.
“You’ve been mucking out the stables,” she said now, fanning her hand beneath her nose. “I do hope you’ll wash and change before tonight’s banquet, in case I’m forced to sit near you.”
She crossed her legs and smoothed down the front of her shirt. The white fabric set off her berry-red skin, and her black hair—she wore it loose, tumbling about her shoulders—glistened in the early morning sunlight. For the briefest moment their eyes met. Hers were green-flecked brown with hardly any white, the pupils slanted and vertical, like a cat’s. Anskar dropped his gaze to his boots. Niyandrian eyes were unnatural, he told himself. The eyes of a demon.
“Don’t be shy,” Sareya said. “I don’t mind you looking.”
Rhett seemed to stiffen, which made Anskar wonder exactly what was going on.
“You’re wasting your time,” Clenna told Sareya. “Anskar’s incorruptible. And besides, he’s one of us. Why would he be attracted to a Niyandrian?”
“Your brother is,” Sareya said.
Suddenly Anskar understood. Despite the Order’s rules against intimacy, everyone said Sareya was sleeping around. All the Niyandrians were, so people said. Filthy savages. Whoever had decided to allow Niyandrians into the Order had made a terrible mistake. They’d brought with them their immorality, and it was only likely to spread. And spread it apparently had: to Rhett.
“You red-skinned bitch!” Clenna spat as she stood. “You’d better not have!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sareya said sweetly.
“Rhett?” Clenna demanded.
Her brother’s face had gone as red as Sareya’s.
Clenna raised her fist, but Anskar was quicker and grabbed her by the wrist.
“No fighting, remember? Else you’ll be ejected.”
“No whoring, either,” Clenna snarled. “Or don’t you object to that, half-blood?”
Anskar let go of Clenna’s wrist. His hands were shaking as he said, “I am not a half-blood.”
“No,” Clenna said, “you’re a fucking halfwit. Everyone says so, or haven’t you heard?”
Anskar found himself looking at Sareya. “They do?”
She smiled. “Oh, Anskar, you’re such a child. A man in appearance, yes”—she looked him up and down—“but emotionally, a child.” She stood and faced Clenna. “And no, I didn’t sleep with your brother.”
Rhett was still seated, his head down as if trying to hide his shame.
“Once we were done, I told him to leave,” Sareya added. “I prefer to sleep alone.”
Clenna’s jaw dropped. Before she could recover, Sareya was entering the keep.
“You should go to the healers,” Anskar told Rhett. “Make your confession before—”
“Get lost, idiot,” Clenna said.
“I was only trying to—”
“Don’t make me tell you twice. And Anskar: you ever grab my wrist again and you’ll be spitting out teeth, got it?”
Anskar’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. Heat prickled beneath his skin and he narrowed his eyes. Not trusting himself to say anything without exploding, he stormed away from Clenna and her brother.
Not to his room. Not to rest and prepare. He was too angry for that. Too close to doing something that might get him expelled from the Order.
Instead, he headed for the smithing hall, where he could take out his anger by beating red-hot metal with a heavy hammer.
Anskar waited outside the double doors of the knights’ refectory with the other novices. It was evening, and after spending hours expressing his fury with hammer on steel in the smithing hall, he’d returned to his room to wash and change. The violence had left him, but one wrong word from anyone could still set him off. He knew it was a failure for him to feel that way. The Five was a god of balance: Menselas despised excess in anything—in feelings above all else.
The double doors opened, and the smell of spiced meat made Anskar’s stomach growl. The novices jostled each other to be first inside, but despite his hunger, Anskar was determined to be last. It showed self-control.
“Hurry up, boy,” called the knight who had opened the doors.
Boy! The knight was barely out of boyhood himself, and Anskar was taller and heavier. As he passed through the doors, he saw that the knight’s symbol of Menselas—a five-pointed star within a circle of Skanuric runes—was newly embroidered on his robe. Probably his mother had done it.
The novices were finding their seats at the long tables that skirted the dining hall. Some of them pointed toward the tall windows through which the manicured lawns and colorful blooms of Branil’s Burg’s gardens were still visible in the fading light. Others craned their necks to stare at the gilded ceiling high above, hazed by the smoke pluming from the five braziers set in a star formation at the hall’s center. The resin incense sprinkled over the coals gave off an odor at once sweet and pungent.
At the table opposite the double doors were seated twelve knights in simple white robes with a crimson symbol of Menselas embroidered on the breast. They were already digging into a selection of meats and roasted vegetables, drinking wine and talking boisterously.
Vihtor Ulnar was among them. The Seneschal. Vihtor was a big man, well into middle age, dusky-skinned with fair hair and blue eyes—he may have had Inkan-Andil heritage.
Platters of roast duck were placed before the knights at the Seneschal’s table. Anskar could smell sage and rosemary, garlic and onions; the yeast of freshly baked bread.
“Where’s our food?” grumbled Orix, seated across from Anskar. Orix was Traguh-raj, from the Plains of Khisig-Ugtall, and always hungry. It showed in his girth.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t get none,” the lad sitting next to Orix said. Naul was as skinny as Orix was sturdy, and half a head taller than any of the other novices. He was also wily for his age, as cunning as any goat-riding Soreshi sorcerer. If Naul thought they might not get fed, it was a genuine concern.
Anskar placed his hands on the table, then noticed the dirt under his nails and dropped them to his lap. But not before they were seen.
“You just come from the smithing hall?” Naul asked.
Anskar shrugged.