The barracks had been a high school once, built to serve several thousand of the Plano area’s wealthiest students. The dozen huge, gray buildings were centered around an enormous courtyard that included a practice football field, several tennis courts, and a running track. The compound was boxed in by a high concrete wall, topped in razor wire. What had been built to defend the scions of wealth and privilege from their jealous peers also made the former school an ideal training ground for the Kingdom’s soldiers.

Manny could see hundreds of young men just within the courtyard. They ran laps or charged through a makeshift obstacle course that had been assembled over the old football field. Manny’s head throbbed just watching them. I hope we don’t have to do too much of that shit, he thought as he scratched the bandage over his severed deck, at least not today.

Dozens of men sat in small groups around the courtyard, reading together from books or cooling down from work-outs in sweat-drenched underclothes. Manny could hear the sharp crack of rifle fire from a shooting range nearby. The whole place buzzed with a sort of busy, nervous energy that might’ve been contagious if not for the ugly stares Manny attracted.

“You picked the wrong skin to wear,” Roland muttered at him as a troop of pale young infantrymen clomped past them. Manny couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to be the only person on the training field who wasn’t lily white.

“This might be a problem,” he said.

Roland nodded in response. He spat at the ground and muttered, “We should’a asked Skullfucker Mike to sew you into some new skin before we left.”

Manny frowned. “I’m almost certain that’s not how–”

“Martyrs!” A rough voice cried out from behind them. “Turn ’round, boys. Let me see your eyes.”

Manny stopped on instinct. He stiffened his back and turned around. Roland did the same thing, but with a heavy sigh and a roll of his eyes. The shout had come from a tall, square-jawed man with hair that had gone a majestic shade of silver-gray. He wore a black uniform shirt with brass cross pins in the epaulettes, black cargo pants, and a big black handgun slung low on his left hip. His nametag identified him as “Ditmar.” Manny didn’t know enough about the Martyr’s ­Brigades to tell the man’s rank.

Roland turned as Ditmar closed the distance between them. He stopped about a foot in front of them, looked Roland up and down, and then turned to Manny. The fixer forced himself to meet the grizzled Martyr’s gaze.