Chapter One

Anise wiped the condensation from the lens of her spyglass and held it up to her eye, gazing into the mouth of the forest to the east. There was no movement among the trees, apart from the slowly drifting fog. She adjusted the hunting bow slung over her shoulder so that the string did not dig into her neck. Another pebble found its way into one of her too-small boots, and she squirmed her toes to try to manage it.

"Swear I saw something," she said.

"Give me the glass," Alphus said.

"Oh, stew for a sec," Anise said, still looking. The first trees of the Thornwood jutted up like bony fingers, some crooked, some forked, and all charred black and dead.

"Check your head, Anise, there's nothing over there," Alphus said.

"I know what I'm doing."

"And I don't?" Alphus asked. He took the spyglass and attached it to the clip on his belt. Anise chose not to address his slightly rude behavior and instead walked forward toward the edge of the forest.

"Where are you going?" Alphus asked.

"Just getting a closer look," Anise answered.

"We go in there before this fog breaks we won't see anything."

"We've been out here long enough already. I'd like to find one before they all die of old age."

"That would actually make this much easier," Alphus said.

"Ha!" Anise laughed. "We'll be fine, long as we don't go in too far."

Alphus caught up to her and the two passed the first of the outer trees. The fog was clearer than it appeared from far away, which made Alphus feel a bit better. The ground was bare of brush besides the low grasses. Even so, he sharpened his ears for any sounds of movement.

Anise," Alphus said. "This creature we're supposed to find. Chance there's none left?"

"No more slitherbacks?" Anise said. "Where would they all go?"

"I don't know. Sometimes things just go away. Maybe they did all die of old age."

"The Academy always makes cadets cut a slitherback frill to graduate. It's tradition."

"Could be why no cadets have actually done it the last three years," Alphus said.

"Could be none of them were any good," Anise said.

"Well, most of them still graduate. Like you said, it's just a tradition, we just have to say we tried."

"Do you want to say, 'we tried,' or do you want to come back with the thing's frill?"

Something made a crinkling sound underfoot, and Anise moved her leg to see what she had stepped on. Small scraps of what looked like gray, membranous parchment littered the ground. She picked up a piece of the strange material and felt it stretch like worn leather between her fingers. It was translucent, like filmy glass.

"Sheddings--still fresh," she said. "Tracks, too."

Alphus pulled his bow over his head and removed an arrow from the quiver at his waist, but he did not nock it. Anise made herself ready as well, then crouched down to examine the tracks. The blades of grass were flattened in a wide area, and more sheddings stuck to the trunk of a nearby tree. The three-toed markings were larger than her own bootprints, crushed into the grass and the dusty earth. They pointed deeper into the forest.

As they followed the tracks east, brownish green moss replaced the plains grasses, and crept up the sides of the trees as well. The ground felt springy, and made squishing noises as they walked.

"Say you're right, and this is the last one," Anise asked.

"The last slitherback?" Alphus asked.

"Suppose we kill this one and that's it. How would that sit with you?"

"It's not the last one," Alphus said.

"How do you know? Just suppose."

"If it's the last one, then it's already dead, in a way."

"It wouldn't bother you that we'd be the ones who did off with them?" Anise asked.

"Hardly. The toothy scabs are no use to anyone. We'd be doing the other cadets a favor--let the Captain think up a better test for them."

"And how would you have them test us, oh master of the hunt?"

"Anything but this. We shouldn't even be out here."

"The Thornwood proper's another few miles east. We're safe if we keep from there." Anise meant to sound confident, and her answer apparently satisfied Alphus. Truthfully, she did not know exactly where they were, or how far they had come, and guessed that Alphus did not know either. Despite his complaints, she knew that he would not let himself be the first to turn back. The forest surrounded them now, but it would be simple to turn back and make west for the Academy, if they had to.

As she crouched to look for more tracks, Alphus tapped her shoulder and pointed to his ear. A hushed sound stopped abruptly, but she did not know what it was.

"Where?" she mouthed, careful to make no noise.

Alphus turned his head, scanning all around them. The noise started again, a low hiss, like sand rushing over stone, but deeper, coming from the northeast. Captain hadn't told them to expect a hissing sound, Anise thought. Maybe he had forgotten. Maybe he didn't know what sound the slitherback made. Maybe it was something else. He hadn't told them much. That was part of the test.

Anise went north while Alphus went east. She kept behind tree trunks, moving slowly but quietly. It won't be a slitherback, she thought. The hissing grew louder.

Alphus's bow creaked, then his arrow flew. The hissing stopped, and something moved behind a cluster of trees, then was gone. It was big. The creature was headed east, and Anise ran after it. She heard Alphus off to her right, running with her.

"Did he miss?" Anise wondered. A long, dark tail flicked out of sight ahead, behind a large tree. The trees here were larger. Green brush sprouted up in thick clumps and whipped her legs as she crashed through them. More green was not a good sign. If she could see Alphus's face right now, she knew he would be glaring at her. But they could not turn back. "I can't fail this," Anise thought. She imagined spending another year at the Academy and pushed on, forcing herself to increase her pace. "I've been here too long already," she thought.

Anise imagined Captain Crofley's face if they returned empty handed: disappointed, but perhaps not surprised. Another year. Alphus would blame her.

Ahead the trees crowded together, forcing Anise to slow her chase and scramble between them, ducking under low branches. The trees were thicker, and unnaturally close together, their limbs tangled above. These were not the charred, dead husks of the forest edge--the trees here were strong and alive, and it surprised her. They were taller, too, and tiny leaves cluttered the top boughs. She felt a prick on her hand as she pushed off against a trunk. A small drop of blood welled up from her palm, drawn by a thorn sticking out from the bark. She hadn't noticed them before, but there were a few on every tree.

Alphus approached, making wide, crashing steps through and over the underbrush. "We're going back," he said.

"Did you hit it or not?" Anise asked.

"Of course I did, but we can't go after it now, it's in the Thornwood."

"If its wounded we can track it and kill it. It can't go far."

"If we go any farther, we're dead!"

"We have eighteen hours before we'll feel anything, maybe twenty. We'll be gone well before that."

"I can't believe you're even suggesting this. It's against the law to even set foot in there! Or does the treaty mean nothing to you?"

"I can't stay at the Academy another year. I won't bear it. We go in, get the frill, and come right back. No one will even know we were there."

"No," Alphus said.

"Then this is goodbye," Anise said, and she moved ahead.

"What if they find you?" Alphus yelled. There was anger in his voice, but concern as well.

"They won't," she yelled back.

Once she was past the thick outer strand of interlocked trees and branches, the forest opened up, and she had room to move more freely. She was now in the deep of the Thornwood. In the old war tales, the soldiers talked of the burning feeling inside the body, caused from wandering the wood for too long. "Woodsore," they called it. No more than a day, or less than, and then death. But Anise felt no different than she had outside, and it encouraged her. She crouched down again to look for signs of the slitherback, expecting Alphus to come to her side at any moment. She couldn't hear him, and the trees blocked her view when she looked back. "Has he left already?" she wondered. She was not scared, but she considered turning back. He was right: it was dangerous here. Perhaps the risk was too much.

But as her thoughts tugged her back toward home, Anise noticed something wet and shimmering in the moss below her feet. A black liquid, reflecting the dim light. She leaned closer and proved her suspicion: it was blood. Alphus had indeed hit the slitherback. The creature had thrashed along this area, desperate to get away. Anise continued on, always careful to remember the way west and out of the wood for when she would return. The creature's signs were clear--more blood spackled the ground and leaves, and the brush had crumpled under its trampling. She increased her pace, less worried now about losing the trail.

But with her eyes on the ground, she did not see the hanging object that struck her head lightly, jolting her concentration. The oddly-shaped log swung gently from a rope, tied to a tree branch. She had almost decided to ignore it and continue after her prey, before she realized that it was not a log at all, but a body. Not much was left of it. The rope attached to its ankles, with a small disfigured head at the bottom. Moss covered most of its surface. Black leather skin stretched and bubbled over its skeletal frame. Only when Anise looked closely at the face could she truly tell that it had been human--the sunken pit eyes stared out blindly over her head, and the mouth gaped, jaw-less, but the face was real. Captured or wounded or lost here years ago, left as a warning while the woodsore rotted it from the inside, until the organs melted and bubbled out. Now just a stiff green signpost.

There were others, hung from every tree. Some barely recognizable, decomposed and reclaimed by the ever-present moss. Some were more intact, but still black and hollow. Anise felt vomit rising at the base of her throat, and she imagined that her stomach was dissolving and boiling up out of her.

Then she heard the hissing.

It came from her left. The slitherback lay coiled at the base of a tree-hardly ten paces distant--dark green scales almost indistinguishable in the brush. The long claws at the ends of its feet tensed, slipping into the soft earth. A ribbon tongue flicked in and out of the front of its long, clenched jaws. The frill above its neck rose and fell as it breathed slowly. Alphus's arrow stuck out from the side of its massive, stretched abdomen. Blood dripped from the wound.

"It hasn't seen me," Anise thought. She slowly raised her bow, pulled an arrow from her quiver and nocked it against the string. Her hands shook. The hung bodies looked on silently and she took aim. She imagined a straight line from the tip of her arrow into the slitherback's skull, behind the unlidded eye. She pulled back the string until the base of the arrowhead nearly touched the center of the bow.

The slitherback darted forward, not towards Anise, but something else. It moved south, its whole body lurching side to side as it crossed the forest floor. Anise knew that she may not get another shot, and she released the arrow. But as soon as it left the string she knew it would not hit its mark. She had aimed high, and it landed with a thunk in a tree. Another arrow was already between her fingers, and she ran after it. Instead of shooting as it moved across her field of view, she came behind it, to aim down its path. It moved quickly, despite its injury--in another few seconds she would lose sight of it in the brush. Anise raised the bow again, nocked the arrow, and drew back the string. There, directly ahead of her, in the path of the slitherback, stood Alphus, with his own bow drawn.

The creature slid into a packet of thorny brush, but did not come out the other side. It was completely hidden from view.

"Shoot it!" Anise shouted.

"Can't see him!" Alphus answered. He stepped backwards, slowly. "Damn it!"

"Alphus be careful."

As he took another step back, Alphus's foot caught on the ground, and he stumbled. His arrow jostled free from his fingers, and flew into the dirt near his feet. Branches cracked in the brush, and the slitherback exploded out of the thicket, charging towards him. Alphus drew another arrow as the creature lunged.

Anise had no time to breathe, or lock her stance, or steady her aim. She knew where she wanted the arrow to go--where it needed to go, and she concentrated there, at the slitherback's neck. She released as she heard Alphus scream, then it was quiet.

She threw her bow to the ground and ran, leaping over the thorns, her hunting knife held tightly in her fist.

The slitherback was collapsed and still. Alphus lay underneath it, and his eyes were closed. Anise sunk her blade into the beast's neck and more black blood oozed out, but the life had already gone--her arrow had made its mark. She pushed against its side, rolling it off of Alphus. His eyes shot open and he gasped. His hand grabbed onto Anise's arm , gripping to tight that it hurt.

"Damn it," Alphus said. "Knocked the breath out of me."

"Deep breaths, Alphus," Anise said. She looked up and down his body for the injury that was causing him so much pain. His right sleeve was torn, and she pulled it back, revealing a long gash in his forearm. With her knife, Anise cut two long strips from Alphus's shirt and tied one tightly around his arm to stop the bleeding. The other she tied snug over the wound.

"I can do that," he said, but he didn't stop her.

"Let's never do that again," Anise said.

"Agreed. You almost got us killed," Alphus said.

"This thing is the one that almost killed you. I saved you."

"You engaged it by yourself, left yourself completely open, and then you cornered it, forcing it to strike."

"That's not what happened. You know that. You refused to trust me. You abandoned me."

"You don't care about trust."

"Yes I do!"

"How am I supposed to trust you when you lead us into the damn Thornwood?"

"I'm sorry, Alphus. Really. But we got what we came for, so we can go back now. Right? Let's just go back."

Alphus took out his knife and cut off the dark green frill above the slitherback's neck, careful not to let the ends of the sharp spines touch his hands. The small flap of reptilian skin fit neatly into his pocket. His eyes kept returning to the hung bodies above them, as if making sure they would not drop down to assault them.

"It's this way," Anise said, pointing back the way she had come.

"You're wrong. West is this way," Alphus said.

"I don't know how you got here, but I followed this thing's blood trail. It should take us back out."

"Then let's go. We've been here too long already."

"Oh, you don't want to stay? I could cook up a slitherback roast for us."

"How can you joke like that? We could have died. We may still die, if they find us here."

"We're not going to die," Anise said.

"I'm going to tell the Captain exactly what happened here," Alphus said.

"Don't be an idiot. If he knows we trespassed, he won't let either of us graduate."

"I'm not going to lie."

"Then all of this was for nothing?"

"You don't seem to have learned anything from it, so perhaps it was."

"I can't believe you!"

"This was a team exercise, Anise! We were meant to work together!"

"Then stop acting like you're too good for me," Anise said.

"I am. This has proved that," Alphus said.

Anise groaned. She found her bow and slung it over her shoulder again, then focused on following her path back towards the edge of the forest, eyes desperate for each drop of black metallic blood. For a time Alphus seemed content to follow her in silence. Whenever she looked up from the forest floor, Anise expected to see another decaying body hanging from a branch. But the trees were bare. The size of the trees here still surprised her--unlike the smaller trees back on the plains, here she never saw their tops. The trunks went up and up, and disappeared into the mass of higher branches and leaves.

"Remember when we used to get along?" Anise asked.

"Pretty far back," Alphus said.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the trees began to shed water in loud cascading drips from the leaves high above.

"We're about to lose our sign in this rain," Anise said.

"We're close, aren't we?"

Anise didn't know, but she would not admit that. She felt fairly certain that if they continued their course, they would reach the edge of the woods, but keeping a steady course through dense forest was not easy.

"Not much longer," she said.

Anise felt something small crawling up her back. She brushed the back of her hand underneath her shirt, but didn't come across an insect on her skin. The forest seemed louder now, and not just from the rain--Anise heard cries from distant birds hidden in the branches, and the staccato chirps of insects. Every sound projected everywhere. Again she felt the small thing's footsteps prickling against her skin, higher up her spine now, and she reached back to catch it and throw it away, but found nothing. The tingling feeling was underneath her skin. She scratched at the spot, but the feeling stayed, moving higher up, towards her neck.

"Alphus, do you feel alright?" Anise asked, trying not to betray her worry.

"My arm hurts," he said.

When the tingling reached the base of her neck, Anise's stomach churned and clenched. A trace of vomit burned at the back of her throat, and she fought to hold it down.

"Can you run?" Anise asked.

Alphus's face was pale, and rainwater dripped down from his hair and off the tip of his nose. "Can you?" he said. His voice was weak.

Anise didn't answer. She just ran. Alphus followed close behind, right arm stiff at his side. Water seeped into Anise's boots. The rain pounded everything. And the tingling in her neck grew sharper, like hot needles in her skin. She had never heard of this as a symptom of woodsore before. She imagined tiny parasites, slipping around under her skin, or venom from an unnoticed bite coursing up to her brain.

They followed the crushed vegetation the slitherback had left in its wake, but it was not always obvious. Anise feared that running would make them lose track of it, but they had no choice. She felt the pain in her stomach now--a constant burning that pushed outward from within. The tingling in her neck became a throbbing ache. They ran. Anise tried to guess how long they had been in the Thornwood. It could not have been more than a few hours. "Did I lose track of the time?" she wondered. "Does the woodsore work that quickly?" Whatever the answer, she realized, the result was the same. They had to escape, and she saw no end to the trees.

Anise heard Alphus's voice, but it was faint. She stopped, and hoped she had not lost him. But he was beside her. He spoke again, but she could not hear his voice over the rain and the birds and the insects and whatever else was there with them in the forest. She had not noticed how loud it had all become, but now it was cacophony.

"I can't hear you!" Anise yelled.

Alphus grabbed her by the arm and pulled her forward. They ran, but their speed was gone. Alphus had vomited, leaving a yellow stain on the front of his shirt. Anise imagined her own organs, boiling and frothing inside her, finally bubbling up her throat and out her mouth, and it made her gag.

"Farther," she said, but she couldn't hear herself, even. The noises around her crowded out everything, all except her own heartbeat, which echoed in her chest and in her skull. She did not know why. Her legs were weak now. She had lost all pretense of following a trail and now staggered forward, feet plodding heavily.

And then the noises stopped. All was quiet. Anise had kept her head down, staring at the ground in front of her, but now she looked up. The dense forest growth ended just behind them, and ahead only the sparse, burnt trunks of the eastern plains still clung to the soil. The sun crept low in the sky. Somehow the day had slipped by. Anise's stomach still lurched and quivered some, but the pain in her neck dissipated. She realized that Alphus had just asked her something. Was she alright?

"Better," she said.

He didn't say anything else, and the rain and the quiet lasted for their long walk back to the Academy. Anise wondered what he would think of her now. Now that she had endangered their lives. She did not know what to tell the Captain. Unless they both lied to him, she would not pass the test. She imagined taking this test again, and again, and again. She thought of her father.

"What would he think of me if I couldn't become a knight?" Anise wondered.

The old fortress known as the Academy loomed under the sun in the west. Too distant, and too slow in its approach, Anise thought. The sun threatened to out-pace them. A cadet's life consisted of far too much walking, in her opinion. Often she visited the stables where the knights kept their horses. She would watch them whisper into their tall, flicking ears, and feed them from their open palms. The horses even talked back, in their own way, she noticed. She had never ridden one. The Captain did not allow horseback training until a student had graduated from cadet.

The immense iron portcullis of the fortress greeted Anise with a stern welcome and the promise of a good meal and a stiff bed after her long trial. And while her final assignment had not gone along as she had hoped, it was over and done now, and, ultimately, they had succeeded in their task. Anise only hoped that would be enough. The faces of the two guards peered out at them through the openings in the cross-hatched metal.

"Two at the gate," one shouted, and they pulled the heavy ropes which lifted the gate. When they had crossed through, the portcullis ratcheted back down and back into the dusty dirt with a clang that echoed through the inner courtyard.

"Who's this, then?" said a cadet. Dagthn Post was a few years younger than Anise. He stopped his work unloading a cart of crated foodstuffs, and he smiled when he recognized Anise and Alphus. "Took you long enough," he said.

Apart from Dagthn and the two guards, the courtyard was empty. Most of the knights and cadets would be in bed. Anise felt she could perfectly well crumple to the floor and sleep comfortably on the hard stone.

"Did you get it?" he asked.

Anise nodded.

"Can I see?"

Alphus walked past them and into the hall. Off to report to Captain Crofley, Anise thought. To her, that could wait. All she wanted now was sleep.

"Tell you about it later," Anise said. Her throat was dry, and she winced at the haggard sound of her voice. Dagthn seemed to notice, and he let her go on.

The women's barracks at the Academy were small--just two rows of four bunks. Even so, it was usually empty, save for two regular inhabitants. When she entered, Anise saw that the other, Gelda, was there, already asleep on her bunk. Gelda had been at the Academy as long as anyone. But since her duty was tending the horses, she had little interaction with the other cadets besides Anise.

Anise went to her bunk at the far corner of the room. She replaced her dirty hunting clothes with her frayed sleeping gown and fell into bed. She thought it strange that only a few hours ago she had feared for her life, and now she lay in her own bed. Her journey from the Thornwood back to the Academy felt much longer than the distance from danger to safety, and to some degree she still felt the forest around her--remembered the tingling in her neck, the roar of indistinct noise that had crowded out her own thoughts, and the constant, burning pressure in her gut, threatening to explode.

As she fell into restless sleep, her memories shifted into dreams. A slitherback followed her through the Thornwood, and she did not know the way out. The trees grew taller and wider, and always the creature stalked behind. Then she was in the Academy, but not the one she knew. This one was overgrown with moss and vines. She tried to run down a hallway, but her legs were stiff and slow, as if wading through water. The decaying bodies hung here too, suspended from vines. They stared at her without eyes. She did not feel the pain in her neck or in her stomach now, but she was afraid.

Anise woke to knocking at the door. A voice called her name, and she got out of bed. There were no windows in the barracks, or in most of the fortress, but from the short stubs of burning candle by the door she knew it was morning. She put on fresh clothes and went out.

"Good morning, cadet," Lieutenant Belamire said. The tall knight smiled as he spoke--one of the reasons Anise liked him. "Captain sent me to get you."

Anise gave a slight bow and placed her right hand over her left hip, where a knight's sword hilt would be--the traditional salute of knights at the Academy. "Is it a good morning, then?" she said, and Belamire laughed. He began walking, and Anise followed.

"I would think so. Dagthn tells me you passed your trial."

Anise wanted badly to tell him everything that had happened the day before. She felt that somehow he would take her side, or see some good in what she had done. Or at least she hoped he would. But she did not want to risk that.

"I don't think Alphus sees it that way," Anise said.

"And how do you see it?"

"I did what I had to."

"Cadet Priory has known you for a long time," Belamire said. "I would think he'd know what he's getting by now."

"He thinks he's better than me. Whenever I disagree with him, he acts like he's my superior officer. And the worst thing is he's usually right."

"Maybe he is better than you. That doesn't mean he's right all the time."

Anise knew that Belamire was only trying to make her feel better, but thinking about the day before only made her feel worse. She wondered what he would have done in her situation. Like many of the knights at the Academy, he had fought in the War of Thorns fourteen years ago--had spent nights raiding the woods, pushing back the enemy forces. The knights and the Council Army were the ones who had burned the trees, to stop the forest from spreading. She wanted to ask him about the hangmen--to know how the enemy could do something so hideous to living men.

"Did you get something to eat when you arrived last night?" Belamire asked.

"No, I didn't feel like it," Anise said. "Needed to lie down. I'll get something after I see the Captain."

"He'll be expecting you," he said. They arrived at Bannon Crofley's office and Lieutenant Belamire knocked on the door for her. "Good luck, cadet Eckley."

"Thanks," Anise said.

"Enter," the Captain said from inside. She opened the door and went in.

"I'm glad to see you back safely," Bannon said. They both saluted, and sat down facing each other over the Captain's dark wooden desk.

The Captain's office was notable of all the rooms in the fortress for its glass paned window and wall-to-wall shelves of books and ledgers. Still, it was small--just the desk and chairs took up over half of the space.

Bannon himself was small as well, at least for a knight, but muscled and lean. During the war he gained a reputation as a ferocious fighter.

"Thank you, sir," Anise said.

"Very glad. The trial can be dangerous. It has to be, of course."

Anise had always found it unsettling in her encounters with the Captain that he betrayed no emotion when he spoke. Instead he maintained a dispassionate neutral glare--not threatening, but mismatched to the polite tone of his words--punctuated with his frequent close-lipped smile.

"I spoke with cadet Priory last night," Bannon continued. "Do you know what he told me?"

Anise ran through the possibilities in her mind. "That I'm a stubborn bitch," she thought. "That I don't follow orders or work well in a team. That I'm reckless. That I needlessly put both of us in danger."

"No, I don't," she said.

"He said: 'Cadet Eckley is a credit to the Academy. She displayed great skill and focus during the assignment and we worked fluidly together to complete it.' He expressed that you were ready to begin service as a knight."

Anise shivered as he spoke. After everything they had been through yesterday, she did not expect Alphus to lie for her.

"Do you consider yourself ready to be a knight?" Bannon asked.

"Yes," Anise answered.

"Alphus said that during the assignment, he loosed an arrow at the slitherback and missed, at which point it turned to run him down. You then delivered a killing shot with your own bow to the creature's neck. Is that accurate?"

"I don't understand," Anise said.

"Do you agree with his account?"

"If you wanted to know that, you would not have told me what Alphus said first. You would have asked me, then compared his story to mine."

"Then what did I really want to know?" Bannon asked.

"You wanted to know if I would tell you the truth even if I thought there was no punishment for lying. Alphus would never lie, least of all to you."

"It seems that he did."

"He really told you that?"

"Alphus has never spoken a lie to me before today. He is not very good at it," Bannon said. "But not only did he lie, he also expected you to lie."

"Sir, are we here to talk about Alphus or about me?" Anise said.

"You are to talk about nothing unless I address you, cadet," Bannon said.

"He didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one who made a mistake."

"I know you did. Obviously Alphus felt whatever you had done would jeopardize you both; why else would he lie?" Alphus smiled. "You thought I wouldn't find out you crossed into the Thornwood? You still have the smell of it in your hair."

"We were tracking the slitherback. Alphus wounded it and I thought we could--"

"I don't care, cadet," Bannon said. "By going into the Thornwood, you failed the most important part of the test. You've been told your whole life not to go into those woods."

"I only wanted to pass the trial," Anise said.

"If the Naephra had found you, they would have killed you. With luck, they would have thought you were a wandering, suicidal idiot, and not held it as a breach of the treaty. Otherwise you could have started a war. Which would you rather be, cadet: a girl who starts a war, or a wandering, suicidal idiot?"

"A wandering, suicidal idiot, sir. I'm very sorry, sir."

"Cadet, what do you remember of your father?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Do you think of him often?"

"He's my father, sir."

"What was his name?"

"Fellis Eckley."

"And why did he bring you to the Academy? Why not to a maiden's guild, in the city?"

"He wanted me to be strong, sir."

"Was he a wanted man? Bountied by the council? There's no shame in admitting it," Bannon said.

Yes, there is, Anise thought. "He was," she said.

"And all these years, did he ever contact you? Send you letters?"

"No, sir. But what does my father have to do with this?"

"You want to find him, don't you?"

"I want to know if he's alive. And if I became a knight, I might be able to help him somehow."

"Until you did you would be no use to anyone but yourself. What if you never find him? What if he's dead? Many of the cadets here will never see their families again."

"And that makes them more noble?"

"No, it makes them knights. You were taught how to be a knight but all you learned was how to hold a sword, for your own purpose. Living or dead, your father is gone. He gave you the chance to make your own life--do not throw that away by running after him."

"Don't pretend to know my father better than me, you reeking maggot!"

Captain Bannon’s hand struck the side of Anise's head, knocking her out of her chair and onto the floor.

"After everything I've done for you, you still act the insolent child. Your father would be ashamed of you."

"Did it feel good to hit me, Captain?" In that moment he looked very old to Anise--shoulders slouched, fingers knobby, once-blond hair fading to gray at his temples.

"You will spend the rest of your life here, Anise. And every day you will regret opening your mouth to me."