“That was an illegal move!” Aldin roared. Before my training had gone downhill, I’d admired him. Then I’d learned that he had little time for students who couldn’t keep up, and a wicked wrist for the cane. I’d asked for extra instruction. I’d tried. And now I’d made a critical error. I’d made him look bad.

Ru’our was asking Master Aldin a question that made him scowl grimly, I made out something along the lines of ‘is such a poor show of discipline and skill normal?’ through the ringing in my head. A few of the elders were nodding along, their faces graven, and they were all looking at me.

I staggered back. The adrenaline was emptying and reality was crashing into me with the violent urge to make a break for the woods. The end of Aldin’s staff landed in my solar plexus so hard that my vision went black. My lungs and my lungs were still spasming with paralysis when it came back. The pain lodged itself into the entirety of my torso, a takeover.

“Hold him.”

Yennis was behind me, he caught me and wrenched my arms behind my back. The staff whipped the ankles out from underneath my knees, and I went down, like the sack of bricks. Aldin closed the distance and slapped me, square across the scar on my face. My head cracked to the side. At first I didn’t feel pain—shock. “You bring shame on every student in your class before the elders,” he was snarling.

I felt my gut shrink to a hard rope, I was struggling without conscously deciding to struggle, but Yennis held me fast. He had to be able to tell I was panicking, just let me slip, I willed. He didn’t let me go.

“No, I assure you, this one is exceptional,” Aldin fumed, the smokestack of a forging furnace, “and he will be dealt with in kind.”

“I have to question your judgment, Master Aldin, putting him before us,” Wainwyre piped up, arms crossing. Wainwyre’s facade of confidence developed over past few years, his obliviousness had not. Your sister has more leadership in her demure, industrious pinky toe than you have in your whole body. Yinjane Wainwyre spent her mornings baking bread for the poor and convincing the unruly village children they wanted to learn to read in a backwards hellscape—Benjamael was completely unaware he’d snubbed Aldin, ignored him for a seat on the council when the plague took two elders along with his father. Everyone thought Aldin would be named an Elder, and few things drove Aldin like entitlement and resentment. So fucking young, and he was also selfish, and he was also weak, and he was crossing his arms at me. You don’t know what you put your sister through, you don’t know what she came to me crying in the night for and told me and begged me not to tell because she had no one else to talk to. You don’t know who was there in the middle of the night feeding you charcoal. I could take him down in one sentence, six words, betray his twin sister and make all of this end.

Aldin kicked me in the stomach, and I doubled, my insides spasming, heaving up the nothing that was in my stomach. Lucky it wasn’t in the balls.

“You stand there while he charges you and attacks you! Your reflexes are nonexistent! If he had a weapon, your guts would be in the dirt and you’d finally cease to waste our attention. And then, you execute an illegal move once you’ve lost. You could have damaged a viable student. Useless, and honorless. Get off my training field.” Master Aldin nodded darkly to Master Byron, the assistant teacher, watching the proceeding from a few feet away. “You will never repay the debt of your life. Go and receive forty strokes and meditate on blood sacrifice, perhaps this will serve you better in the tournament. My training can go no further for you, and I will not waste the class’s time.”

The class was silent. Not even Thomas chuckled nervously. We all knew what happened to whoever ranked worst in the tournament, to those who got sick, or foundlings who couldn’t make apprenticeship. In the corner of my eye, Ordin grinned.

“Go.” Aldin ordered.

There were no Misfortunes, no bird demons in the woods sliding beads on the abacus, hiding deep between the trees, counting if the requirements for suffering were satisfied, thirsty for the pain of human sacrifice in the swamps upstream—they just had to give it a name and a story, fit it in a box. Reality was a simple, universal maxim—someone else suffers, so I do not.

And sometimes, not even that worked.

I was dragged away by the Assistant Studentmaster and his cane to the edge of the sparring field. Master Byron looked down at me, my shirt in his fist, his scarred hand thick around a cane.

Byron dropped me. Crossed arms. He just shook his head. I took a breath. It had finally, actually happened. I’ve been kicked out of training. I wiped my nose. I didn’t think it was broken. I have until the tournament. It was the crowning event of the spring festival, throwing the students in the ring one on one, no holds barred, so the village could marvel at their military prowess, at the shedding of their own blood. Then, warriors would select their apprentices, based on what they knew of their training in this class, and their performance in front of the ooh-ing and ahh-ing crowd. It was in exactly a week.

I felt their eyes again—the elders had moved on but their gaze had come momentarily to us, and now they were watching. It had to look good, the sacrificial lamb, the scapegoat. I heard the whistle, louder and sharper than usual, assuring me I’d have welts. The worst was over, but now the panic had burned through my system. I flinched. The cane snapped into my back.