and the Swift Swords.”
“Ah,” she said, with a subtle nod. “They were bullying you, then?”
Cyrus shrugged, felt the cool breeze. “They had their reasons. It’s all very competitive, very ‘us vs. them’ in the Society’s structure. They saw me as an easy target, so they took their turns trying to break me.” He shrugged again. “It didn’t work.”
“What did you do?” J’anda asked. Cyrus looked around; every eye was on him, even Martaina’s, which was decidedly knowing.
Cyrus waited before answering, sifted through his emotions to see if he could find it, a thread of regret for what had happened. It was strangely absent. “I killed their leader.”
Nyad choked on a spoonful of stew, and a little of it sluiced out of her upper lip, dribbling down her pale chin and along the cleft. “I’m sorry … you killed him?” She waited for the nod, then looked around, wide-eyed, to the others sitting around the fire before she came back to him. “How old were you?”
“Seven, I think,” Cyrus answered, racking his memory.
“My gods,” Nyad said, holding her bowl apart from her as though it contained something appalling. “How old was he?”
Cyrus gave it some thought. “He was about … oh, I don’t know, sixteen or so? Perhaps seventeen.”
Nyad stared at him, gaping. The look was not held by anyone else, though Longwell watched him sidelong, wary, and J’anda seemed disquieted, his teeth visible in a grimace. “Why did you kill him?” Nyad asked.
“Well,” Cyrus said, “in fairness, it was a training exercise, and it was Swift Swords versus Able Axes, and while we were supposed to keep it non-lethal and strictly to more of a ‘tag, you’re out’ system, he didn’t play fair. So I killed him.”
“Oh,” Nyad said with a distant sort of nod, “so it was an accident.”
“No,” Cyrus said, and took another sip of his stew, “I knew full well what I was doing. I bludgeoned him with a tree branch until his head split open.”
“But …” Nyad’s voice came again into the quiet. No one else was eating now. “… You did it for your team, then? To win the game? For the … Swift Swords?”
“I wasn’t on the Swift Swords team,” Cyrus said, and this time he did feel a pinch of emotion, but he took another sip of the stew anyway.
“So you killed your own teammate?” J’anda asked, watching him carefully.
“No,” Cyrus said and finally felt the burn of it. He looked to his left to see Aisling watching him, curiosity in her eyes.
There was a steely quiet that was finally broken by J’anda. “I admit my understanding of the Society of Arms is somewhat … flawed. But I was given to understand that every single child brought in was given a Blood Family- for kinship, for a familial structure and familiarity.” The enchanter spread his arms wide. “For support. So that even while learning the hardness of battle, you are not ever fully alone.”
“True,” Cyrus said, and put his patera aside, the stew now gone. “But occasionally an inductee is deemed unworthy of having a Blood Family and is separated out to survive on their own.” He felt a tightness in his jaw. “I was one of those.”
There was a silence. “But …” J’anda said, “they would have all been arrayed against you, yes?” He stared at Cyrus, and there was a horror behind the enchanter’s eyes. “They base everything in their training off of Blood Families?” Cyrus nodded. “Every exercise pits the Blood Families against each other?” J’anda kept on, and Cyrus nodded every time. “So if you are without a Blood Family, then you huddle with the others who are without one? Make your own sort of small circle?”
Cyrus smiled, but there was no warmth to it. “It’s a rare thing, being without a Blood Family. I was the first in five years. The one before me died two months into the training. Typically ‘outcasts,’ as they’re called, don’t survive six months.” He gave a slight nod. “And I do mean survive. They’re usually found dead in the morning hours, well past the time when a resurrection spell would be able to bring them back.”
“Murder,” Nyad said with a quiet whisper. “Nothing more than child murder.”
“Aye,” Longwell said, arms folded where he sat on a log. “That’s pretty savage, even for a guild that trains warriors.”
Cyrus shrugged. “If you know that’s how outcasts die going in-and they do tell you, by the way, probably as a suggestion to the Able Axes and Swift Swords, but I took it as a warning to me to be scarce during the nighttime hours-it makes it that much easier to avoid that sort of death.”
“Barbaric,” Nyad said, shuddering. “Absolutely barbaric.”
“I’m certain that back when Pharesia had a Society of Arms, they did it the same way,” Cyrus said lacksadaisically. “But it’s all rather irrelevant now.”
“How is this irrelevant?” J’anda said. “How did you survive? Most don’t make it six months? You were there for … twelve years?”
Cyrus shrugged. “I fended them off. I did what I did on that training exercise after the first year and gave the Able Axes a string of injuries that made them afraid of me. And I held the Swift Swords at bay until Cass Ward came of an age to keep them off me.”
“He was your friend, then?” Aisling spoke up at last. “Cass? He’s an officer of The Daring, right? But he was your friend?”
“No,” Cyrus said with a slight smile. “An outcast lives and dies alone in the Society of Arms. They’re not considered
There was a deadened silence after that, a quiet that settled on their party that no one seemed to want to break, so Cyrus did it himself. “Come on. This was all years ago. I don’t feel sorry for myself about it, so none of you should, either.”
“Sorry,” J’anda said, with a weak smile, “it’s just … uh … that is truly appalling. It might take a bit of adjustment to get over that. I’m no stranger to the cruelties that others may deal out, but that … is a special sort of disturbing, if I may say so.”
Cyrus felt a cool settle over him, like the waters deep in his soul became placid. “It was life. It made me who I am today.”
“The only one without a Blood Family to ever graduate the Society of Arms,” Martaina said from behind the stew pot; her gaze was not accusatory, but something else, her words tinged with slightest awe. “To survive being an outcast.”
Cyrus shrugged. “You do what you have to. It was just a day-to-day struggle, like everyone else experiences in life-” He held up a hand to stop Nyad’s protest, “a different level of struggle, perhaps, but a struggle. Everyone has adversities. I made it through, and we don’t really need to go sift it. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t faced what I faced then.”
“And they do teach you how to be fearless?” Longwell asked, perked up with interest. Cyrus saw the others, as well, easing up, paying attention, waiting for his answer.
“As close as they can get,” Cyrus said. “They expose you to it, over and over, things that scare you, and it just gradually fades away, like night turning to day. Snakes, bugs, battle, blood, everything, all the major things. They talk about fear all the time, how it can hurt you, how it can make you flinch. Fear is death on the battlefield, the surety of injury and failure because you’ll hesitate at the wrong moment and it’ll cost you.”
“Interesting,” J’anda said, as though he wanted to say more, but didn’t. “I believe … I have reached my end for the evening. With a nod to each of them, he spoke once more. “Good night, all.”
“I should probably turn in as well,” Cyrus said, and stood, grasping his patera.
“I’ll wash that for you if you want,” Martaina said from behind the cauldron. “I have to stay awake a little longer anyway, and I’m going to take care of the cauldron before I go to bed.”
“Sure,” Cyrus said and set it next to her. Aisling did the same a moment after him, and he walked behind a tree, about twenty feet from the campfire, where he had set his bedroll alongside Aisling’s.
“You never had a friend until after you left the Society?” She watched him closely as he took to a knee,
