The training camp was two days east of the city, past the farmlands, at a place that had once been a livestock yard. Kael suspected this was not a coincidence. They were housed in long wooden barracks that smelled of animals and sawdust, forty men to a hall, sleeping on straw mats laid over hard-packed earth. The walls had gaps where the boards didn't meet, and at night the wind came through and lay on top of you like a second blanket, except worse in every way.
On the first morning, they were given weapons.
Kael received a spear. It was not a bad spear — the shaft was straight ash wood, the head well-forged, the balance acceptable. But as he turned it over in his hands, he noticed something on the collar just below the head. A small mark, etched into the metal. Not the royal crest. Not any armory stamp he recognized. It was a symbol he had no name for: a circle bisected by a vertical line, with a small notch cut from the left side of the circle, precise enough to have been deliberate. He rubbed his thumb over it, thinking it might be a maker's mark or some quirk of the casting. But it was too clean. Too intentional.
He thought about asking the weapons master about it. Then he watched the weapons master hand out spears to thirty-nine other men without once looking at any of them, and decided against it.
He kept thinking about the mark anyway.
The instructor was a lean man named Sergeant Drav, a veteran of something — he never said what, exactly, only that it had been worse than this, and then he would look at them all in a way that suggested he was not sure they would believe him. He began training on the first afternoon, immediately, before anyone had properly slept off the journey.
"First lesson," Drav said, walking the line of them slowly. "Don't die before learning your enemy's name."
He let that sit.
"If you die in the first engagement," he continued, "it means you were stupid. If you die in the second, it means you were unlucky. If you die in the third, it means I failed you. I don't intend to fail you, so you are not permitted to be stupid or unlucky. Is that clear?"
No one answered.
"Good," Drav said. "Unclear orders should be ignored. Remember that."
There were five of them who found each other in those first two days, the way people do in places where no one asked them to be — not through any decision, but through proximity and shared looks and the gradual accumulation of small kindnesses. Sorin, the dockworker from the registration list, who had a voice like a man twice his size and a laugh that arrived before any joke did. A lanky young farmer named Bren who was seventeen and clearly terrified and spent considerable effort making sure no one knew it, with limited success. A woman named Ysse — the regiment had three women, which surprised Kael; he had not thought the conscription had included them, but apparently the Low Quarter criteria stretched further than he'd known — who was quiet in a way that felt deliberate rather than shy, and who had noticed the symbol on her spear three hours before Kael mentioned his. And an older man, mid-thirties, called Orren, who had worked as a cartographer's assistant and knew more about the geography of the eastern territories than any of their instructors seemed to.
On the second night, Sorin stole an extra bucket of water from the washing station, and they all used it, and someone — Bren, probably — said something quietly funny about the smell of the barracks, and for about ten minutes they were just five people sitting in the dark laughing at something small.
Kael filed this away carefully. He did not know what it would cost, later, to have people you cared about in a place like this. He suspected it would cost a great deal. He let himself laugh anyway.
That night, lying on his mat, he stared at the ceiling and tried to construct an honest list of things he knew.
He knew he had not chosen this.
He knew the men who made the choice had not sent their own sons.
He knew the symbol on the spear was not standard.
He knew Ysse had found the same mark on hers, which meant it was not random.
He knew a war had been declared, but no one had explained — really explained — what enemy required a coalition of six kingdoms to fight it, and what that enemy had actually done, and why the answer to those questions required men from the Low Quarter specifically.
He did not know why this war really existed.
That last thought was the one that kept him awake longest. Not fear, though there was fear. Not grief, though there was that too. Mostly just the particular discomfort of being moved across a board without knowing who held the pieces, or what game was being played, or how many of the other pieces were going to end up in a pile beside it before anyone bothered to explain the rules.
Outside, wind came through the wall gaps.
Somewhere across the barracks, Sorin was already snoring.
Kael held the spear in the dark and ran his thumb over the mark one more time.
A circle. A line. A notch cut from the left.
He had no name for it yet. He intended to find one.