When he got up to go urinate in the middle of the night, a Blackguard accompanied him. It was a man Kip had never met, and he said nothing. Merely walked with Kip, and held him back for a moment while he checked that there were no assassins in the toilet. Ridiculous.

It was a relief to get out of bed in the morning, though Kip didn’t feel rested in the slightest. Several older, second-year students came and herded the new students toward the dining hall.

Kip was ravenous, but he got no more food than anyone else in the serving line. He reached the end of the line in dread. Tables were laid out in long rows, and students clumped together with friends.

Which I don’t have.

In fact, Kip had quite the opposite. He caught sight of Elio, whose arm was wrapped in thick bandages and hung in a sling. The boy was talking with his friends when he saw Kip. He shut up instantly and blanched.

I should go over there. I should go and sit with them, disarm them with small talk, pretend nothing happened, but assert my right to sit with the toughest boys in the class.

But he didn’t have it in him.

It was only then that he realized there was no Blackguard following him this morning. He looked around at the lines of students, tables, food, servants, and slaves. No Blackguards anywhere. For some reason, it took what little, tottering confidence he had and knocked it over with a breath. They’d seen what he’d done. They’d decided he wasn’t worth protecting.

Then Kip saw some kids he recognized: the boy with the strange spectacles who’d sat behind him in class yesterday and some others from the Blackguard training class. They were the outcasts—Kip could tell immediately. They were the awkward, the intelligent, the ugly, with those Blackguard hopefuls who were destined to fail out early and were merely trying to get in from some vain hope of their own or their masters’. There was, of course, space at their table, and space around them, as if they were contagious. Kip went over.

“Can you read?” the boy asked as Kip came close. His flip-down spectacles currently had the blue lens down over one eye, and the yellow down over the other.

Kip hesitated. Did they not want him? “Um, yes?”

“You need to get to lecture if you can’t. If you can, you need to check the work schedule. Hold on, you had that—Oh, never mind, of course you can read. You told Magister Kadah to go stuff herself.”

“Really?” a homely girl asked.

Kip ignored her and tucked into his food.

“Why are you sitting with us?”

“You looked nicer than them,” Kip said, gesturing with a toss of his head toward the tough boys. “You want me to leave?”

They all looked at each other. Shrugged. “No,” the boy with spectacles said.

“So, what are your names?” Kip asked.

The bespectacled boy pointed to himself, “I’m Ben-hadad,” then to the homely girl, “Tiziri,” then to a gangly, gap-toothed boy, “that’s Aras, and—”

They were interrupted by a girl’s voice. “Hey, did you all hear about Elio getting his halos tapped by the new—” She cut off as she saw Kip.

“And… that would be Adrasteia. Classic, Teia.”

“We’ve met,” Kip said dryly.

Teia opened her mouth, then sat down silently, defeated.

“I didn’t hear,” Aras said. “What, new who? What happened?”

“Aras,” Teia said through gritted teeth.

“What? Was there a fight?” Aras asked.

“I don’t know if I’d call it a fight,” Kip said.

“You? You were in a fight? With Elio?” Aras said.

“You broke his arm in three places!” Adrasteia—Teia?—said.

“I did?” Kip asked.

“Wait, you broke Elio’s arm?” Ben-hadad asked. “I hate that kid.”

“Is that how you hurt your hand?” Tiziri asked. She had a birthmark over the left half of her face. She wore her kinky hair flopped over that way to try to hide it, but it was a futile attempt.

Kip looked at his bandaged hand. He was supposed to get a fresh poultice smeared on it every day. He’d forgotten this morning. He didn’t even know if he could find the infirmary from here. “No, uh, this. I kind of got thrown into a fire.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You have to start from the beginning,” Ben-hadad said. “Aras! Stop staring over there or they’ll know we’re talking about—”

Aras, Teia, Tiziri, and Kip all glanced over at Elio’s table at the same time—and saw that Elio’s friends were all staring at them. Caught.

Ben-hadad scrubbed his chin where his beard was just coming in. “Hopeless,” he said. He flipped up both of the color lenses on the spectacles. He fixed his gaze on Kip, one eye looking slightly larger than the other. Kip had heard of the lenses that corrected bad vision before, but he’d never seen them. It was unnerving. “So,” Ben-hadad said to Kip, “spill.”

“About Elio? He came over and hit me a few times, and I punched him in the nose.”

They waited.

Kip spooned in more gruel.

“Worst. Storyteller. Ever,” Teia said.

“You punched him in the nose so hard his arm broke in three places?” Ben-hadad prompted.

“Look,” Kip said, “it wasn’t a big thing. I was really scared and I knew he was going to hit me, so I—you know? I hit him first. I kind of panicked.”

“And broke his arm?” Teia asked.

Kip shrugged. “He said he was going to kill me.”

Their looks were somewhere between dubious and totally impressed.

Kip decided to defuse it with humor. “I’ve only got one good hand. Now if he comes after me, we’ll be even.”

Not funny.

“Holy shit,” Aras said. “I saw you at the tryouts, but I had no idea you were that good.”

“You don’t look like a badass,” Ben-hadad said. “But I guess it proves you’re a Guile.”

“I heard after the fight was over, you broke his arm because he called you Lard Guile,” Tiziri said. She hadn’t been at Kip’s tryouts, obviously.

Teia sank into her seat.

“It wasn’t like that,” Kip said. “Really. It was just really fast, and then it was over in like three seconds. I got lucky. Seriously. Ask Teia. She’s tougher than I am. She kicked me in the face yesterday.”

“What? What? What?” Ben-hadad said. “Teia?”

“Kip was assigned to be my partner,” Teia said. She grimaced.

Oh, thanks.

Ben-hadad asked her, “Partner? You tried out? I thought you weren’t going to try out until next year.” He looked momentarily hurt, but then covered it. “I would have come! Ha, scrub!”

Kip’s lifted eyebrows asked the question for him.

Aras said, “Ben-hadad got here too late for the drafting lectures year last spring, but he did test into the spring class of the Blackguard.” He turned to Teia. “But you said you thought the Blackguard was stupid. Standing in the path of swords to protect idiots is for idiots, you said.”

“Aras, you’re sitting next to Kip Guile,” Tiziri said.

“I know. I heard the first time. What’s the—Oh, oh! I’m sure Teia didn’t mean your father’s an idiot, Kip. She probably meant the White. I mean, I guess it’s gotta be one or the other of them, huh? Maybe the Red? Oh, wait, that’s your grandfather.”