“Higher,” Zu said. Qince Grask raised his shield. “Higher still.”

  Yechvan leaned against a tree on the edge of the training grounds and spat a grape seed into the dirt. He’d observed enough younglings to know that the boy would never amount to much more than another warm body, another cold shield on the field of battle—with or without Zu’s tutelage.

  Grask was small for twelve, even for one of the blooded. He stood in a fierce defensive stance, but the effect was less than intimidating. The top of his head reached Zu’s elbow, if Yechvan was being generous.

  Although the pair were both sons of the qish, Yechvan had never known two people so vastly different.

  Whereas Zu towered over everyone, even full-blooded orcs like Yechvan, the boy hadn’t been blessed with their orcish father’s immensity. Grask’s arms were twigs, his legs barely branches and his trunk smaller than most other saplings his age. But he was quick on his feet and quicker with his mind. Among strangers, he spoke little and blustered less, signs of a precocious wisdom. His brother, on the other hand, thrived at the center of attention. People were drawn to the gregarious Zu like bees to the bloom.

  Their maternal skin tone, though passed down from different mothers, snuffed out their father’s sun-kissed lime green. Grask’s mahogany skin was a few shades lighter than Zu’s wine dark. In a stroke of fortune, neither had inherited their father’s dominant features. The boy’s face still held the roundness and smoothness of youth, and Zu’s mother had graced him with her thin, angular jaw, in sharp contrast to Qish Grusk’s, which resembled a stonecutter’s mishap in shaping a block of granite.

  Yechvan winced as Zu sent Grask sprawling. Strands of sweaty black hair tumbled from the boy’s ponytail and stuck to his brow and neck. He stood and dusted off his breeches, resumed his stance. His rich amber eyes were alert and observant, much like his half-brother’s, drinking in every detail, searching to exploit any advantage his opponent might miss…were his opponent not the mighty Zu Bu.

  Zu trained shirtless, not one scar adorning his impressive physique, despite enduring countless hours of training and a brutal and bloody war. One long ebony braid, bound with twine, began at the crown of his head and ended in a tuft of loose hair that swung below his waist, announcing to all of Banx that he had never lost a contest in single combat. He had competed in both of the illustrious Dubao tourneys since the war. None had yet matched his unique blend of lightning speed, savage tactics and giant strength—which was why the qish had chosen Zu to train his heir.

  “You will never kill anyone with that stance, Little Grask,” Zu huffed. “Lock your feet in place but flex your knees so you—no, like this.” Zu took up his stance, showing the boy how to keep his footing. “If you lose your feet, you die.”

  The qince heaved a frustrated sigh. “But I am doing it like you.”

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  “No.” Zu kicked Grask’s feet from beneath him and sent the boy tumbling to the dirt. “Clearly, you are not.”

  Grask bounced up and rushed at Zu in a blaze, swinging the wooden sword. Zu swatted it aside and brought his own training blade back across the boy’s face. A plum-sized welt blossomed on Grask’s dark skin. Tears mingled with blood streaked pale red down his swollen cheek. The qince glared at his brother with Solonia’s long-burning fury.

  “Our father assured me you would be an obedient student,” Zu said, towering over the boy. “Was he wrong?”

  “No,” Grask growled through gritted teeth.

  “Good. Then listen.”

  Zu went through the lesson again, but he suffered from the curse of the gifted. Because he learned through doing, he struggled to explain his methods. Instead he relied on the crude edict “If you do this, you die. If you do that, you die,” grunting his displeasure and frustrating the boy beyond measure.

  Quiet and reserved, Grask favored Yechvan’s own style of learning: researching, listening, watching from afar before dipping his hair in the water. It would be a long, hard road for the pair—if Grask could learn from Zu at all.

  “The training’s going well, I see,” Ulula said, sneaking up behind Yechvan. She squatted at the edge of the courtyard, pulled up a stalk of tall grass and slipped it between her crooked teeth. “I was hoping he’d have improved since last I caught a glimpse of him training with his uncle. Seems my hope was misplaced.”

  “Your hope in his uncle, perhaps. Good riddance to the fool. But I see promise.”

  She threw Yechvan a skeptical look.

  The pair followed the wretched lesson for a few minutes in companionable silence. It was no wonder that Ulula and Zu, both action-oriented, failed to discern the boy’s potential. It was a faint glimmer just then, but it was there. In Yechvan’s experience, a runty shrub, when properly nurtured, could outstrip the tallest of trees.

  “I saw you drinking alone in the corner last night,” Ulula said, feigning casualness. “I thought we put a stop to your brooding a few years back.”

  Yechvan probably should have surmised the real reason for her visit, since she rarely showed interest in the qince, but a spate of sleepless nights had dulled his mind. Though he wanted to assuage her worries, Yechvan could do naught but shrug them away, much as he’d done with Zu. She squinted up at him, her sweat-slicked olive-green skin shining bright against Solonia’s rays.

  Yechvan averted his eyes, dodging her discerning gaze and her question. “Weren’t you supposed to be training the new bantax this morning?”

  “Tch. Deflect all you want. But I tell you, that overactive brain of yours is going to get us all into trouble one day.” She turned her attention back to the lesson. “If this damned boy doesn’t doom us first.”

  Grask flagged. His shield drooped to his knees. His sword was lethargic, his movements transparent. To his credit though, he hadn’t uttered a word of complaint, determined to win Zu’s approval. Yechvan felt for the youngling. Grask should have begun intense combat training years earlier, and it would not be easy to regain the lost ground.

  Then again, Yechvan and Zu had suffered through brutal training and come of age in a time of uncertainty, on the heels of one conflict after another, when impending war with one of their many neighbors—all human kingdoms—was not only likely but inevitable. Why shouldn’t the next qish feel a bit of pain?

  “Stop,” Grask cried after a particularly nasty blow from Zu’s training blade. “I yield.”

  “Who taught you that? It certainly wasn’t me. There is no yielding on the battlefield!” Zu rushed the boy, once more knocking him on his rear in a puff of dust. “If you yield, you die!”

  Ulula belted a hearty laugh and shook her head. She stole a few grapes from Yechvan and strutted away, leaving him to watch the remainder of the failed lesson alone.

  It wasn’t going as well as hoped.