“You’re from the Tangled Lakes,” Frances murmured, with the tone of an apology. “You have no breeding. No lineage. You don’t look like anyone in charge. You’re, pardon me for saying so, very small. And,” she chuckled darkly, “you’re a woman.”

“There are women in charge,” Scratch countered, though that was hardly the point. What was the point? Perhaps she had lost the point entirely. No, no, this was the point the princess was making—that there was no point. No point in trying, no point in striving. Because Scratch had made the mistake of being born to a penniless Tangled Lakes woman in the Royal City slums and, thusly, had no point at all.

“The women in charge are well-bred. They’re the exceptions. The commanders without breeding are men. And they’re all exceptional. Have you seen Julaine throwing a spear without his shirt? So what if he’s from the Southern Reaches? The man is a side of beef.”

“Of course I’ve seen Julaine throwing a spear,” Scratch spat, and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry, Your Highness.”

“Don’t think on it.” She smiled tightly, her wicked eyebrows dimmed by discomfort. “Maybe if it was just ‘commander.’ But it’s ‘lord commander.’ Or, I suppose, ‘lady commander.’”

“Yeah. Lady.” She was ambivalent about being a “lady”—different than “woman,” which, come to think of it, had its own baggage—but the knighting? That was uncomplicated.

Lady Scratch Keyes, Lady Commander in the King’s Guard. She had imagined it so many times: the weight of the sword on her shoulders. The feel of the rug pile beneath her knee. Rising before her king as a knight of the realm.

“You ought to know, Keyes,” Frances murmured. “My father will take everything from you. He’ll keep you just comfortable enough to keep thinking you can reach for more.” She met Scratch head-on, those dark eyes unblinking. “He’ll never give it to you.”

She felt impossibly heavy, as if she and the bench were both sinking into the mulch below. She tasted soil.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s not too late to do something else.”

She fingered the white raised scar on her face, a line drawn by sword point from forehead to cheek.

“Something else . . .”

Frances shrugged. “Something other than being in the King’s Guard. He won’t knight you. You’ve reached your ceiling there. Maybe you could be appreciated elsewhere, doing something else.”

“Like what?” She didn’t care that she sounded desperate. She was desperate, because there was nothing else. There had been nothing else since the day the Academy recruiter plucked her from the streets—a stringy ten-year-old, her pockets heavy with stolen fruit—and told her she would be a soldier. There was nothing else she was good at. There was nothing else she liked. Without the King’s Guard, Scratch Keyes was nothing at all.