“You seek to provoke me, brother,” Vaelin said, patting his horse’s neck to calm him. “But you forget, I have no father, so your words mean nothing. Why is it the only joy you show these days is in battle? Why do you hunger for it so? Does it make you forget? Does it ease your pain?”

Nortah tugged his horse's reins and resumed the walk to the stables. “It eases nothing. But it does make me forget, for a while at least.”

Vaelin kicked Spit into a canter, overtaking Nortah. “Then mayhap a race will help you forget too.” He spurred into a gallop and headed for the main gate. Naturally, Nortah beat him by a clear length, but he was smiling when he did so.

It was late in the month of Jenislasur, a week after Vaelin’s uncelebrated fifteenth birthday, when he was called to the Aspect’s chambers.

“What now?” Dentos wondered. They were at the morning meal and he spat bread crumbs across the table as he spoke. Table manners were a lesson too far for Dentos. “He must like you, you’re never away from his rooms.”

“Vaelin is the Aspect’s favourite,” Barkus said in a mock serious tone. “Everyone knows that. He’ll be Aspect himself one day, you mark my words.”

“Piss off the pair of you,” Vaelin responded, stuffing an apple in his mouth as he rose from the table. He had no idea why he was called to the Aspect, likely it was a another sensitive question regarding his father or a new threat to his life. He was often surprised at how the passage of time had made him immune to such fears. His nightmares had abated in recent months and he could look back on the dark events during the Test of the Run with cold reflection, although his dispassionate scrutiny did nothing to dispel the mystery.

He had munched his way through most of the fruit by the time he got to the Aspect’s door and concealed the core in his cloak before knocking. He would feed it to Spit later, doubtless earning a shower of slobber as a reward.

“Come in, brother,” the Aspect’s voice came through the door.

Inside the Aspect was standing next to the narrow window affording a view of the river, smiling his slight smile. Vaelin’s nod of respect was cut short by the sight of the room’s other occupant: a skeletally thin boy dressed in rags with bare, mud-stained feet dangling over the edge of the chair in which he was uncomfortably perched.

“That’s ‘im!” Frentis said, jumping to his feet as Vaelin entered. “That’s the brother that in-inspirated me! Battle Lord’s son ‘e is.”

“He is no-one’s son, boy,” the Aspect told him.

Vaelin swore inwardly, closing the door. Giving knives to a street urchin, a shameful episode. Not what is expected of a brother…

“Do you know this boy, brother?” the Aspect enquired.

Vaelin glanced at Frentis, seeing eagerness under a mask of dirt. “Yes, Aspect. He was of assistance to me during a recent… difficulty.”

“Y’see?” Frentis said urgently to the Aspect. “Told ya’! Told ya’ he knew me.”

“This boy has requested entry to the Order,” the Aspect went on. “Will you vouch for him?”

Vaelin stared at Frentis in appalled surprise. “You want to join the Order?”

“Yeh!” Frentis said, nearly jumping with excitement. “Wanna join. Wanna be a brother.”

“Are you - ?” Vaelin choked off at the word “mad” and took a deep breath before addressing the Aspect. “Vouch for him, Aspect?”

“This boy has no family, no one to speak for him or formally place him in the hands of the Order. Our rules demand that all boys who join must be vouched for, either by a parent or, in the case of an orphan, a subject of recognised good character. The boy has nominated you.”

Vouched for? No-one had told him this. “Was I vouched for, Aspect?”

“Of course.”

My father spoke to them before he brought me here. How many days or weeks before had he arranged it? How long had he known and not told me?

“Tell ‘im I can be a brother,” Frentis was saying. “Tell ‘im I helped you.”

Vaelin drew a heavy breath and looked down at the frantic desperation in Frentis’s eyes. “May I have a moment alone with this boy, Aspect?”

“Very well. I shall be in the main keep.”

After he had gone, Frentis started again, “Ya gotta tell ‘im. Tell ‘im I can be a brother…”

“Do you think this is a game?” Vaelin cut in, stepping close to grasp the rags covering Frentis’s narrow chest, pulling him close. “What do you want here? Safety, food, shelter? Don’t you know what this place is?”

Frentis’s eyes were wide with fear as he shrank back, his voice small now, “’S where they train the brothers.”

“Yes they train us. They beat us, they make us fight each other every day, they put us through tests that might kill us. I have fifteen years and more scars on my body than any seasoned soldier in the Realm Guard. There were ten boys in my group when I started here, now there are five. What are you asking me for? To agree to your death?” He released Frentis and turned back to the door. “I won’t do it. Go back to the city. You’ll live longer.”

“I go back there I’ll be dead by nightfall!” Frentis cried, voice heavy with fear. He sank back into his chair and sobbed miserably. “I got nowhere else to go. You send me away and I’m dead. Hunsil’s boys’ll do for me for sure.”

Vaelin’s hand lingered on the door handle. “Hunsil?”

“Runs the gangs in the quarter, all the dippers, whores and knifers pay ‘im homage, five coppers a month. I couldn’t pay last month so his boys gave me a beatin’.”

“And if you can’t pay this month he’ll kill you?”

“It’s too late for that. Not about the money anymore. ‘S about ‘is eye.”

“His eye?”

“Yeh, the right one. It ain’t there no more.”

Vaelin turned back from the door with a heavy sigh. “The knives I gave you.”

“Yeh, couldn’t wait for you to teach me. Practised on me own. Got right good at it too. Thought I’d try it out on Hunsil, waited in the alley outside his tavern ‘til he came out.”

“Taking him in the eye was an impressive throw.”

Frentis smiled weakly. “Was aimin’ for ‘is throat.”

“And he knows it was you?”

“Oh ‘e knows alright. Bastard knows everything.”

“I have some money, not much but my brothers will pitch in some more. We could buy you a berth on a merchant ship, a cabin boy. You would be safer on a ship than you could ever be here."

“Thought about that, din’t wanna. Don’t like ships, get queasy just crossing the river in a flatboat. Besides, I’ve ‘eard sailors’ll do things to cabin boys.”

“I’m sure they’ll leave you alone if we guarantee it.”

“But I wanna be a brother. I saw what you did to those Crows. You and the other one. Never seen nothin’ like it. I wanna be able to do that. I wanna be like you.”

“Why?”

“’Cos it makes you someone, makes you matter. They’re still yakkin’ about it in the taverns y’know, how the Battle Lord’s boy humbled the Blackhawks. You’re almost as famous as your old man.”

“And that’s what you want? To be famous?”

Frentis fidgeted. It was clear he was rarely asked for an opinion on anything and found this level of scrutiny disconcerting. “Dunno. Wanna be someone, not just some dipper. Can’t do that all me life.”

“All you are likely to earn here is an early death.”

Frentis no longer looked like a boy then, rather he seemed so aged and burdened by experience that Vaelin almost felt himself to be a child in the presence of an old man. “That’s all I’ve ever bin likely to earn.”