He felt halfway dead, anyway. The training weapons that the High Garda of the Great Library used were not toys; they delivered real jolts and very real bruises. “Sorry,” he muttered, and then, a second too late, “sir.”

Now that she wasn’t just a silhouette against the sun, he could see the warning flash in her eyes. We’re not equals here. Forgetting that was a stupid, personal issue he needed to overcome, and quickly; she couldn’t afford to let it slip for long without seeming to encourage a lack of discipline in the ranks of their squad.

Hard habit to break, friendship.

The rest of the squad gathered together now from around the corners of the mock buildings that served as their training ground. It was mercilessly hot, as it always was, and each of his fellow Garda soldiers now looked as exhausted and sweat streaked as he did. Glain wiped her face with an impatient swipe of her sleeve and barked, loud enough for the rest of the squad to hear, “Report what you did wrong, soldier!”

“Squad Leader, sir, I failed to watch my back,” Jess said. His voice sounded strained, and he knew from the still-burning ache in his back that he was going to have a spectacular sunset of a bruise. “But—”

Her face set like concrete. “Are you about to excuse your failure, Brightwell?”

“No, sir!” He cut a look at Tariq, who was openly grinning. “It was friendly fire, sir!”

“Oh, be fair. I’m not that friendly,” Tariq said. “And I did it on orders.”

“Orders?” Jess looked at Glain, whose face was as unreadable as the wall behind her. “You ordered him to shoot me in the back?”

Glain’s expression never flickered. “In the real world, you’d better watch your friends as much as your enemies. Allies can turn on you when you least expect it. I hope the bruises remind you.”

He hardly needed the tip and she knew it. He wasn’t a fool; he’d grown up never trusting people. Trust, for him, was a recently acquired skill that had developed in the company of his friends and fellow postulants. Like Glain. Who was trying to remind him not to rely on it.

Jess swallowed a bitter mouthful of anger and said, “No excuses, sir. Tariq always struck me as shifty, anyway.”

“Then why’d you let your guard down, you bright spark?” Tariq said. “I admit, I like playing the heinous villain, sir.”

“Playing?” someone else in the squad muttered, and Tariq mimed a finger shot in her direction as he swigged from his canteen. Jess would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much, but Glain’s lesson had been pointed . . . and on point. I can’t afford to relax, he thought. I knew as much from the beginning. Glain’s just trying to remind me. With, unfortunately, Glain’s typical subtlety.

“Settle,” Glain said flatly, and the squad did. Instantly. Nobody questioned her—not for long. Jess certainly didn’t. “We’re nearly at the end of training,” she told them, and paced back and forth in front of them with a lithe, restless energy that never seemed to go away, no matter how long the day. “We will finish in the lead. Screw that up, any of you, and I’ll slap you out of service hard enough to brand my palm print on your grandmother’s face. Clear?”