“Approach, feint, and step in,” he called to the sweating recruits. “No, not like that—you’ll never be able to make use of your body weight at that distance. Here, Ronan, let me demonstrate on you.”

  “This will hurt, lad,” he said quietly as he brought Ronan out in front of the others. Ronan turned away from him and, as instructed, spun around as Janus came within striking distance. The guildsman feinted with his right hand toward Ronan’s head, then easily stepped to the side and drove his fist into a tender spot just below Ronan’s ribs.

  Ronan slid to the ground with a breathless gasp of pain, the wind knocked out of him.

  “You see the difference?” Janus called out, reaching down to help Ronan to his feet. “You get in close, step right up, feint, then strike. Even if he’s armed, he’ll never have a chance to get the blade into you. When he’s on the ground, you can disarm like this and like this.”

  Without warning, he demonstrated another two impressive strikes on Ronan, knocking an imaginary sword out of his hand twice. Ronan gritted his teeth and growled at the guildsman, and the other Bones all laughed. Janus slapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder.

  “And what’s the key thing you’ve taken away from being on the receiving end of this strike?” he asked conversationally.

  “It’s painful and disabling,” Ronan said in a hoarse voice, “but the pain doesn’t last long. There’s no permanent damage.”

  “Exactly,” Janus said. “No permanent damage. There’s an important lesson. The more power and training you have, the more potential damage you can do. The more damage and the more impact, the more consequences you could set in motion without even realizing it. We of the Night Guild are precision instruments. We are silent, efficient, and do minimal damage for maximum effect. We are a knife in the dark, not a hammer on a battlefield. It’s in silence that we are our most effective. We are…”

  “Guildsman Janus!” an excited voice called, interrupting the guildsman’s flow. Ronan looked over—he had forgotten all about Tyrel, having become engrossed in the guildsman’s explanation. So, it seemed, had everyone else.

  Tyrel jogged over to them from his spot at the back of the courtyard, holding up his injured right hand. He had removed the bloody bandage, and his right palm was visible for all to see. They could not see any blood, or sign of an injury—nothing.

  Everyone gasped in amazement and began to talk at once.

  “Silence!” Janus roared with uncharacteristic fierceness.

  Everyone shut their mouths immediately and looked at him, wide-eyed.

  “There is a powerful lesson here,” Janus said in a stern voice. “One that you will all learn in time and in your own way.” He turned to Tyrel, who still held his uninjured palm up for all to see. “Tyrel, you have done well,” Janus told him. “You know the way of the Bones and have learned this insight on your own. You will not deprive your fellows of learning it in their turn, will you?”

  “No, guildsman,” Tyrel said solemnly. “I will not deprive them.”

  “Then let us leave it there for now. Join us in learning this new drill.”

  “Do I get to hit Ronan?” Tyrel asked brightly.

  “No,” Janus said, “I think, this time, Ronan gets to hit you.”

  From that time forward, it seemed that every few days one of the Bones injured themselves in some small and unexpected way. Diana cut her arm on a splinter of wood on one of the practice daggers, and Eric received a cut to the face when they were practicing throwing wooden balls at targets. When these injuries happened, Janus always recommended the same course of action. They would smear some blood on their amulet, staunch the flow with bandaging, then retreat to the back of the courtyard to wait. Then, Janus would invariably give the rest of the group some engrossing new exercise to practice, and a little time later, the injured person would return, healed of their wound and glowing with the insight they had gained.

  Every day, Ronan stayed on the lookout for his opportunity to learn the healing magic. He expected at every moment to trip, fall, or be accosted with some inexplicable malfunction of their training equipment, some mistake on the part of another student that would cause him to bleed and retreat to the back of the courtyard. He burned to learn this new magic. His memory glowed with the image of Rorqual rising up from the bloody shrine, after growing back his very head. Such power, to be able to heal the body at will! This lesson clearly marked the beginning of their formal tuition in the magic of the Night God.

  And yet it did not happen. Week after week passed, and more and more of his classmates went through the test and succeeded. Ronan was not the only one who noticed. He observed Janus giving him thoughtful looks in quiet moments, and began to feel that there must be something wrong with his progress. Surely, he worked hard enough? He unwavered in his commitment to the training, so what could be wrong?

  When the final student received a cut to his foot on a piece of sharp stone, which everyone agreed had not been there yesterday, Ronan felt despair creep over him. Even in his weakest areas, he had never been last at anything in his training before. He began to meditate for longer in the mornings, hoping that the Night God would come to him and either test him or give him a reason why he was not ready to be tested.

  In his weakest moments, he flirted with the idea of asking the god directly to test him, but his good sense always held him back from saying the prayer. There would be no point. The god knew everything he did. Ronan had not forgotten Tarquin’s warning on the day they had received their amulets. A Bone level apprentice who asked the Night God to hurry up this test could receive an injury he might not walk away from.

  Slowly, the deeper lesson began to reveal itself. Ronan desired the progress, and he wanted to learn the new lesson, but his very hankering after it held him back. He pushed himself with too much haste, and he was reminded of the lesson Janus had been trying to teach them all year.

  Haste is the enemy of speed and efficiency, he thought glumly as he lay in bed one evening, waiting to drop off to sleep. As long as I’m desperate to learn this, it will not happen. I need to let it go. That’s the hardest thing to do, but there are other lessons to focus on.

  Very well. He would concentrate on every lesson but the healing magic. Holding that resolution firmly in his heart, he drifted into sleep.

  It was with this resolution that Ronan went to the training ground the next morning.

  Chapter 12

  Ronan’s arms ached, and his hands were sweating as he clambered up the rough surface of the climbing wall as he had been doing for the past hour. Janus had rearranged the setup of grips and footrests again. No one knew how he did it, but several times a month the apprentices would arrive to find the climbing wall’s routes completely rearranged and Janus standing at the base and looking pleased with himself.

  As the noon hour approached, the hot sun blazed down from the middle of the sky. The training courtyard became a sun trap at this time of day. The Bones were used to working in these conditions—they had been training here most of the summer, after all—but they found it challenging to maintain smoothness, efficiency of movement, silence, speed, and situational awareness, all while climbing up a new arrangement of handholds and squinting up into the blazing sun.

  Perhaps that was enough to explain what happened. Ronan always suspected that the Night God had, after all, taken a hand in the course of events. The other Bones’ tests had all manifested in strange ways that were hard to explain without outside intervention. This was the same, but just more dramatic in its result. Despite everything that happened in the coming years, he always suspected that, despite all appearances, the Night God had caused his fall. At the time, he felt sure of it.

  However it happened, the result was the same. He had been climbing just above the halfway point, on his way back down, when he fell. His eyes had been fixed on the wall below him, looking for the next foothold, when his hands lost their grip on the ledge above. It almost felt as if someone had shoved him in the middle of his chest, but of course no one had been there.

  Suddenly, he fell through the air. They had learned how to land well from a fall and had practiced it a little, but that had been from lower heights than this. He could only have been falling for a few seconds, but thoughts raced through his head.

  Tuck the arms in, land on the side, and not the back or the head, he thought. Roll with the impact.

  He remembered the bright flash when Eric fell, back in those first few days of his time at the guild. Would he be saved by magic?

  The dirt floor of the courtyard raced up to meet him.

  He hit it on his side as he’d intended, but he did not manage to roll. Instead, his right arm crunched sickeningly as he landed awkwardly on it. The breath had been knocked out of him, and his vision darkened for a moment, then brightened again as he fought to retain consciousness and managed to succeed.

  “Ronan!” Janus shouted and ran over, his face a picture of grave concern. “By the gods, your arm!”

  Ronan groaned as he rolled over and dragged himself up into a sitting position. He looked up at Janus, and at the Bones crowding around him, their black robes like the shadows that—for the first time in a long time—crowded into his mind.

  Janus dropped to his knees by Ronan’s side. “Back off,” he snapped at the other apprentices. “Get out of my light! Give Ronan some room.”

  Janus had a leather bag in his hand, in which he kept his bandages and salves and the like for dealing with the small injuries that were not uncommon on the training court. He peered at Ronan’s arm. Ronan still had not looked at it. He felt no pain, just a dull aching sensation. He breathed steadily, knowing he’d have to look in a moment but not quite ready for it. From the pallor of Janus’s face, he knew it was not good.

  “That wall,” Janus muttered. “It’s supposed to have a safety spell in place that stops this from happening.”

  So that was what had saved Eric. But why had it not worked for him? Slowly, it dawned on him. This had to be his test he’d been waiting for all these weeks.

  He looked down at the arm.

  Bone jutted from the ragged flesh just below the elbow. He saw muscle and white fat torn inside his arm and caught a glimpse of a thick purple vein pulsing deep within his flesh. The bone had a jagged edge that gleamed an incongruously clean-white in the bright sunlight. Blood dripped down his arm, soaking into the dirt floor of the training yard. His hand hung limp at the end of his arm. Pain hit him like a thunderclap, slamming up his arm and through his chest. Nausea flushed through his gut, and he retched dryly.

  “We need to get you to the infirmary,” Janus said. “This is a bad break. You’re going to be out of the game for a little while, my lad. Come on, lean on me. Let’s get you up.”

  Ronan grasped at his consciousness. Darkness threatened to flood his vision, and he saw the shadows of the buildings detaching themselves and stretching across the courtyard toward him; eerie humanoid figures made of darkness emerged from them.

  No, he thought firmly. This is my test. I will not fail.

  With a supreme effort of will, he fought the pain, nausea, and faintness. With a strength he did not know he had, Ronan dragged his way back to lucidity.

  “No,” he gasped. “Not… not the infirmary.”

  “What?” Janus said in surprise. “Ronan, this is a terrible injury.”

  “The… the test. Janus, listen to me. This is the test. My test. My healing.”

  The instructor’s face darkened. “I don’t think so,” he said, doubt in his voice. “The test is not meant to be something so brutal as this.”

  “You said it yourself,” Ronan replied, his voice firmer now. “The safety spell on the wall didn’t work. That’s the Night God’s magic. I shouldn’t have fallen. It felt like someone, or something, pushed me off the wall. This is my chance to learn the healing magic—the insight that everyone has had except me.”

  “You think this is the test?” Janus asked, a brow cocked. “I don’t know, Ronan.”

  “I do.”

  Even as he spoke, a powerful clarity settled over his thoughts. He was still in pain—enormous pain—but he could see clearly through it. He felt that indefinable sense of being observed and knew the Night God was watching him. Certainty filled him. His test had come, at last.

  “Let me set the arm, at least,” Janus said. “The test is about learning how to heal wounds in the field, but no Night Guild operative would rely on the Night God to do all the work. If this happened to you when you were on a mission, you would set it if you could before trying to let the god take over.”

  Ronan almost smiled. Janus was badly rattled. If he hadn’t been, he would never have spoken so plainly about the aim of the training.

  “Very well,” he said. “Do it, and do it quick.”

  “This is going to hurt,” Janus said in a flat voice as he drew a splint and bandaging from his leather bag.

  “It already hurts.”

  “Well, it’s going to hurt even more.”

  This time, Ronan did smile. He even choked out a laugh. “Better not hang about, then.”

  “Bite on this,” Janus said, handing him a short strip of leather. Ronan looked at it with distaste, but saw the sense in it. He placed the leather strap between his teeth.

  Janus worked as quick and gentle as he could, but there was no getting away from the pain. When it was done, Ronan leaned back against the wall, his arm stiff in the wooden splint at his side, and his head reeling with the effect of the pain. He had not blacked out, though he’d come close. The setting had been the worst pain, more than he had imagined. But, now that it was done, he felt immense relief. The pain had begun easing. Now, he could concentrate on his next step.

  The shadows retreated back to their places at the feet of the buildings. Janus readied bandaging to staunch the bleeding.

  “Wait,” Ronan said. Using his left hand, he pulled his silver crescent-moon amulet out of his robe and scooped up some of the blood from his wound. He smeared the gore across the gleaming silver.

  He sensed a shiver in reality around him, as if by putting the blood on the amulet he had set off a chain of events that might, in the end, change the world. Janus gazed at him for a long moment, then finished binding the arm.

  With a groan, Ronan put his bloody hand on the wall and heaved himself up.

  “You’re sure about this?” Janus asked, but it was clear from his face that he knew Ronan’s will was set.

  Ronan just nodded.

  “Right then,” Janus said. “You know by now what to do.”

  He did. He found it difficult to get to his feet and swayed a bit as he did so, but he did it. One of the Bones—he did not see who—approached and handed him a water skin. Awkwardly, he lifted it to his mouth with his left hand and drank deeply. He looked for the person who had handed it to him, but they were gone. The Bones all stood at a distance in a line as they watched him, their shadows flickering like those cast by candle flames despite the bright light of the high sun.

  “Okay,” Ronan said. Still clutching the water bottle, he walked to the back of the courtyard. Janus’s eyes followed him until he was in place, then the instructor began barking instructions at the class, teaching them a new drill to occupy their attention.

  Why does he do that? Ronan thought. He’d not thought about it before—he’d not had leisure to consider it before; after all, life was busy enough learning what he was being taught. Now he considered it.

  Janus distracted the other students from Ronan, pulling their attention away from the wounded student with a new task. From the broken bone, he thought and felt a smile flicker around his lips. The splinted arm hung by his side. After a while, he decided that his arm felt too uncomfortable. He unwrapped a bit of the thick layer of bandage and fashioned it into a loop that went round his neck, making it into a sling.

  Now what? The Night God still watched him. He could feel his presence and a steady regard that gave him both comfort and a level of pressure that kept his attention on the moment.

  Everyone who’s been through this has come back with some insight, and with their wound healed, he thought. But they had cuts and grazes—the worst was probably Tyrel’s palm. I wish I’d asked somebody about it… no, I don’t wish that. It’s right that we learn for ourselves, but by the gods, this hurts! It’s hard to think straight.

  With that thought, he realized what he needed to do. It was not easy, but he forced himself to become calm. His breathing slowed, and he took refuge from the pain and distraction in observing what went on around him. He watched the sun track the shadows slowly across the courtyard. He watched the Bones go through their new drill—a knife attack using wooden daggers to practice. He listened to the shuffling noise of their booted feet moving across the dirt floor of the yard.

  Up on the top edge of the climbing wall, one of the pale-gray doves that colonized the higher reaches of the guild, landed and began to preen itself. No one else noticed the bird as they were all concentrating on their exercise. Ronan smiled up at it, and it turned its shining eye to look at him.

  Hiding in plain sight. Had the thought come from outside himself? It felt almost as if it had come from both inside and outside, two voices speaking in unison, the way friends who know each other well will sometimes do.

  The red tower by the entrance, that Diana had spotted all those months ago back on Uon, hid in plain sight. It hid so well that it cast no shadow—almost as if the sun itself could not see it.

  Then there was Tarquin, walking through the crowded backstreets of Trentum’s hidden underbelly. People had walked past him without a second glance, but no one had bumped into him. The denizens had not seen him, or Ronan for that matter, despite their both being dressed outlandishly for that part of town.

  They had been hiding in plain sight.

  Every now and again, members of the Bones would glance back at Ronan. He was not surprised—after all, his injury had been a bad one and he guessed he did not look in a good way. But, the longer he stood there, the longer he thought about what he’d seen, and the more he thought that it was essential for them not to notice them. Everyone else had come back to the group with their injury healed, but only after the rest of the group had forgotten about them.

 

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