The blades came out at first light. Hoff laid them along the rim of the trough in their canvas, six in a row, grips toward the pairs.
“Strike, step, hold,” Hoff said. “The Ministry wants to see a hold, so you will hold.”
“No blade touches the stone. If one falls, the man who dropped it picks it up.”
Liss said the words back under her breath, one at a time. Then she looked at the blades as if they might answer her.
The pairs stood where Hoff had put them. Kade stood with Hesper. Nell stood with Ysra, her bandaged arm tucked against her ribs.
Liss stood with Dorran. Tobin stood at the trough with nothing in his hands, which was where the sum had left him.
“Who is the one left over?” Tobin asked, quietly, not looking at Calen.
“You.”
“Then I will watch the hands,” Tobin said. “Not the blades. Hands tell you first.”
Calen remembered the sixth day, when someone had cut these blades. He had counted them then, too.
Calen stood a step behind the trough, where he could see every pair. He did not say that Tobin was right. He did not need to.
“Will you watch the blades, Master Orrin,” Hesper asked from the end of the row, “or the boy?”
“Both.”
“Then you will miss one of them,” Hesper said. “Does everyone?”
Nobody answered her. Calen did not know, and he did not say so.
Kade took the first blade from the end of the row. He weighed it in his palm with great seriousness, as if it had been made for a duke and was late.
“The Duke strikes first,” he said.
“The Duke strikes when he is told,” Hoff said.
Kade moved. Hesper did not. She looked at the blade, then at Kade’s face, then at the wall behind him.
“Does the Duke want to be cut first,” she asked, “or does he want to cut first?”
“Strike,” said Hoff.
Kade struck. Hesper stepped, a beat late, and then she held. The flat of the blade stopped a finger’s width from her shoulder.
“Again,” said Hoff.
They went again. Calen watched the feet, not the steel. Feet told him what a hand was going to do before the hand knew it.
Hesper’s left foot was too far forward. Kade’s right was too wide. Neither of them had yet learned to stop at the top of the swing.
“Again,” said Hoff, to both of them, and to the wall, and to the air.
“The Duke’s hold is perfect, Master Hoff,” Kade said, from the wrong side of the pair.
“Your hold is a question, Ansel,” said Hoff. “Again.”
Ysra and Nell went next. Ysra took her blade from the row and turned it over in her hands, slowly, reading the maker’s stamp on the tang.
Nell waited. She had her good hand on the grip and her eyes on Ysra’s feet.
“The blade is sound,” Ysra said. “The paper says six blades. It does not say that all six will hold.”
“Strike, Dunne,” said Hoff. “Stop reading it.”
Ysra struck. Nell stepped in clean and held the way Calen had taught her in the second week. The blades did not touch.
Calen counted the hold, and Nell kept it, and nobody in the yard said anything about it at all.
Then Hoff walked down the row to the third blade.
He lifted it off the rim and held it out, grip first, to Dorran. Dorran took it with both hands, the way he took everything, and he looked at it as if it might bite.
“Sorry, sir,” Dorran said to Hoff. “It is heavier than the others.”
“It is the same weight,” Hoff said. “Hold it until it is not.”
Dorran held it.
Calen looked at the grip. He had looked at it the day before, and he had seen the twine wound in a hurry, two turns too few at the top of the wood.
He could see the gap now, a thin band of bare grey wood where the twine stopped. He could see that the tang went into the grip at a slant.
He opened his mouth.
“Orrin,” Hoff said, without turning around. “Stand where you are put.”
Calen closed his mouth. He stood where he was put.
Hoff had run the Keep’s drills for eighteen days without a cut. Calen did not know whether that made him careful, or only proud of being right.
“Liss, strike,” said Hoff. “Dorran, step. Hold.”
Liss struck. She did it exactly as she had been shown, short and flat, from the shoulder, and Calen could hear her copying the drill under her breath even as she moved.
Dorran stepped in polite and careful, with the blade lifted to catch the cut. He did everything right.
Then the third blade’s grip gave a small click, like a knuckle.
The steel came out of the wood. It did not fly. It slid, and the wood stayed in Dorran’s fist, and the blade kept going, end over end, toward the stones.
Dorran did what he had been taught to do with anything that fell. He closed his hand on it.
The edge opened his palm from the heel to the first finger. He did not scream. He made a short sound, like a man who had hit his head on a low beam.
He looked down at his hand with a kind of surprise. For a moment nothing came out of it. Then the blood came, slowly at first, and then all at once.
“Sorry,” Dorran said. “Sorry. Sorry.”
“Hold,” Hoff said.
The yard stopped. Somewhere on the wall a guard swore once, quietly, and then nobody swore at all. Hesper’s hand went to her mouth, then came down.
Kade took one step forward and then stood still, and all the color had gone out of his face. Liss’s copied breath caught in her throat and stayed there.
The guard on the wall walk turned to look, then turned back to the drill.
Tobin was already moving.
He had been standing at the trough, a long stride from the pair, with nothing in his hands. Now he crossed the gap in four steps and stopped an arm’s length from Dorran.
He did not run. He did not shout. He looked at the hand, and then at the boy’s face, and his own face was very still.
“Hold it,” Calen said, from behind him.
Tobin stopped. He did not turn. He lifted his hands a little way, the way he had been taught to lift them at the board, and then he stopped again, with his fingers open in the air.
“May I touch the cut?” Tobin asked.
Dorran blinked at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Does it hurt now?”
“Yes,” said Dorran.
“Then I will be careful,” Tobin said. He took Dorran’s fist in both hands and pressed.
His fingers went over the edges of the wound, firm and careful, and the blood ran between his knuckles and down his wrist. He did not flinch. He kept his arm straight.
There will be no blood in this room, Calen thought. Not until I say so. I will tell you first.
He had said it on the board, to Tobin, with the ink still wet on the boy’s palm. This was not the hall.
This was the yard, with the wind off the hills and six blades on the rim of the trough. It did not matter where it was.
He had promised to tell Tobin first. He had not told him anything, and there had been no time to.
“Still,” Calen said.
“I am still,” said Tobin.
“Arm up,” Calen said to Dorran. He took the boy’s wrist and lifted it above his heart. “Keep it there.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Stop saying it. It was the grip. Not your hand.”
Dorran looked at him, surprised, and then at the grip still lying in his other fist, with its twine hanging loose.
“Yes, sir,” he said. His lips were white. “I am not going to scream, sir.”
“Good,” said Calen. “Then look at the wall.”
Dorran looked at the wall. Liss stood beside him, very close. For once she did not copy anything.
She only said, “Hold it,” in her own voice.
Hesper unbuckled her own belt and held it out to Calen without a word. He took it, wrapped it twice around Dorran’s wrist above the cut, and pulled it tight.
Nell had already torn a strip from the hem of her shirt. She pressed it against the cut, beside Tobin’s hands, and said nothing.
It was clean enough. Calen saw her check that before she did anything else.
Blood came out of the wound in a thin, slow line. It ran down Tobin’s wrist and into the cuff of his shirt. He did not look at it.
Calen counted the drops on the flags, the way he counted anything he was afraid of. He stopped at nine, because the rest were running together.
He checked Dorran’s fingers, one at a time. The thumb closed, and so did the first finger.
The middle two did not want to close, and he did not argue with them. The casting test wanted two good hands. Dorran had one good hand left, and it was bleeding through a belt.
Kade had not moved from his place. He looked at the blood, and then at the cut, and then he said, very carefully, “The Duke was not cut. The Duke would like that written down.”
“Nobody is writing the Duke down, Ansel,” said Hoff, without looking up. “Stand where you are put.”
Ear came out of the guardroom with a bucket and a rag. He wiped the flags without being asked, and he did not look at the blood while he did it.
Hoff came down the row with the canvas in his arms and stopped beside the trough. He looked at the cut, at the blade lying on the flags, at the loose grip still in Dorran’s other hand.
Then he looked at Calen, and he did not seem surprised.
“The grip was loose before the drill,” Calen said.
“It was tested.”
“It was looked at.”
Hoff’s jaw moved. For a moment his hand stopped on the front of his coat.
“It holds,” he said. “Write that down, Orrin. Write that I said it.”
Calen did not write it. The gate book was Hoff’s, and Hoff had already decided what it would say.
“Tomorrow,” Calen said.
“Yes,” said Hoff.
“Tomorrow is the Mark.” Calen kept his voice even.
“Here. On this cut. Tobin holds his hand over it for forty counts.”
Tobin’s head came up. “Over Dorran?”
“Over the cut.”
“Is it open tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Will it hurt him?”
“Yes,” Calen said.
Tobin looked at Dorran for a long moment. Dorran looked back, and then he nodded, and his lips moved around the word before he got it out.
“Yes,” Dorran said. “Yes. Please. I mean, yes.”
“Then I will ask him again tomorrow,” Tobin said. “Before the count.”
“Yes,” Calen said.
Dorran swallowed. “Will it be clean, sir? Tomorrow?”
“It will be counted,” Calen said.
“That is not what I asked, sir.”
“No,” Calen said. “It is what I can promise.”
Dorran nodded slowly, and he kept his arm up.
Hoff took out his book. It was the gate book, bound in grey board, and he carried it everywhere the Ministry sent him.
He wrote in it at the gate, slowly, the way he did everything, with his lips pressed together. Calen watched the pen move. It stopped, and then it moved again.
“Hoff,” Calen said.
“I have it,” said Hoff. “Mid-morning, after the bread. Mark. Ives’s cut.”
He did not look up. “The Ministry likes times.”
The pen scratched the words into the page, neat and unhurried. Blood ran over Tobin’s fingers and dripped onto the flags, one drop, then another, and Tobin did not lift his hand.