And now I couldn’t understand what my father was thinking. But I did know what happened when I disobeyed. Ripping my hand away from the railing, I slid back into my seat and dug the tip of my sword into the floor to keep from staring at the smile on the boy’s face. Chunk after chunk of rock chipped away from the crumbling arena. I drilled the blade farther and farther until I couldn’t feel the muscles in my arm.

“Justice has prevailed,” my father shouted. “The boy is free to take the cart and go.”

Guards moved forward to unshackle the boy. He whooped and hollered and kicked sand into a wide arc as he sped toward the cart.

My knuckles turned white around the hilt still in my hands. “There is no justice in this desert,” I said.

“Perhaps justice has been kinder than we thought, Kateri,” my father replied. He motioned, and a figure melted out of the shadows at the top of the arena.

Rodric sauntered down the steps, pausing to bow before my father.

“Your trap is working perfectly,” my father extolled.

Rodric bowed again, but he couldn’t hide the smirk sliding across his lips. He was only a few years older than me, but the tiny scars running up and down his arms and neck—left there by fire-legged flies—spoke to his upbringing. He hadn’t grown up behind curtains of spider silk to keep the flies and sand out. No, he’d grown up at the mercy of the elements.

He’d adopted the closely shaven hair favored by most of the soldiers. Of course, that was after he’d shown up to one of their training sessions months ago, emerging from the tail end of one of the sandstorms as though the desert were depositing him on our doorstep. He’d looked haggard and windblown, with hair down to his shoulders. But appearances had been deceiving; he’d marched up to my father’s then captain of the guard and stabbed him before the man could even get a word out. When the other soldiers brought Rodric before my father, he’d stood tall and said that if the head of my father’s security was that easy to kill, he should find someone else to fill the job.

Someone like Rodric.

My father had seen something in Rodric and took him on.

But I’d never seen what my father had. My father had been a strict yet even-tempered teacher. When I got injured while training, he’d see to me himself—refusing to let the apothecaries do it. He’d bind up my arm or leg or whatever I’d injured while drilling into me what I’d done wrong. He’d say pain was earned by inattention and lack of skill, that it was up to me to avoid pain by doing better. After he’d bandaged me, he’d make me repeat the move I’d messed up until I could do it perfectly one hundred times in a row. It had been rough at the time—all those nights I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep until I’d executed the move flawlessly again and again—but I knew my father did it for me, for us. He wanted me to win, and that meant I had to be the best.