Inda by Sherwood Smith

other boys followed, and you could divide their partisanship by how many first put on practice padding and how many didn’t.
    They’d paired off and begun old routines when Master Gand and two other tutors walked through the archway, put horny old hands on their hips, and looked around with a pensive air. All three masters then strode to the padding bench and pulled out the bigger jackets and helms. They alone used real swords.
    Then, without wasted words they called names, and began to put the boys through basic drill, and then a bout. Nobody made the unpadded ones get padded, but when Dogpiss turned away from his bout, sweaty and his arms feeling like spindled wool, he stared at Marlo-Vayir, crimson with tiny cuts all over his face and arms. Smartlip had them too, though he had fewer. And each of the other unpadded boys had at least three or four cuts, tiny ones, the sort of cut that the practiced duelist inflicts as a humiliation or a goad.
    One by one the scrubs went silent in shock, uneasiness.
    We’re training for war, you brickheads, Dogpiss thought.
    Sponge thought, There’s blood in all the old stories, but no pain. All you hear about is honor and courage.
    Inda thought, Master Gand is warning them.
     
     
     
    Dogpiss had grown up in barracks under a father who taught him to be observant, so his assessment of his fellows’ abilities did not vary much from the masters’. But few are universally vigilant, and so it was with Dogpiss. His attention was on the other scrubs and the masters watching the scrubs. He never once looked up, and so he did not see five horsetails slip along the new walls adjoining the nearby barracks and vault lightly up to run along the rooftop. Of course the sentries could easily see them from the higher walls of the royal castle along the eastern perimeter of the academy, but they immediately recognized the Sierlaef and four of his five Sier-Danas. They’d no sooner report them than they would a passing flight of birds or the prowling cats.
    The rules were that they’d be caned if they were caught, but by their second year the Sierlaef’s chosen band knew the difference between what the masters had to officially notice and act on and what they could ignore. As long as the five lay quietly and didn’t talk loud, much less hoot or throw things, the masters wouldn’t notice them. Not officially, anyway.
    With dispassionate expertise the royal heir’s four friends observed and commented on the scrubs at their sword-work. The Sierlaef stayed silent, watching.
    “Hoo. Your Tvei’s wilder than Peddler Antivad the Drunk when he met the wind funnel, Cassad.”
    Cassad Ain snickered. “Weird. Seeing Rattooth down there.” He hid how anxious he was as he watched his buck-toothed, yellow-headed brother Rattooth busily hacking away at a hound-faced boy. The thing about brothers being here was that your own training was right there, being seen by everyone. Your own brother you never thought anyone outside of home would see—
    Brother.
    Pause. Glances the Sierlaef’s way. All four saw the king’s second son fumbling through a practice bout with another boy. He was by far the worst. Clumsy, slow, tentative. Untrained.
    The Sierlaef felt those gazes, but kept his focus on the court below, and the others returned to their comments, keeping them general, and by unspoken agreement avoiding the subject of the red-haired boy known as Sponge.
    The Sierlaef scanned the academy, both the older buildings and the new ones his father had ordered built last year, now occupied by the seniors. The academy was his own domain, for he and his companions were the leaders among the leaders. But the royal heir was impatient of this pretend command. He wore a horsetail now. He was no longer a boy, but was not yet regarded as a man, and he hated it!
    He squinted against the hazy sunlight, gazing beyond the academy compound to the real world: the guard barracks commanded by his uncle. Here, it was just boys and