“I did not summon you,” hissed Ladder.

The one called the Raker said, “I heard your song. I was having a very pleasant time, but your song disturbed me. I listened to its summons. Now I’m here.”

The youth crossed his arms at his chest, and I watched him stare at Ladder as the Headmaster mimicked the Raker’s pose, cross-armed, both of them breathing with a rage I did not understand.

“And are you bereft of parents?” Ladder asked. “What woe brought you out of your very pleasant time, to my court?”

“My parents are living. Much good does it do me.” The Raker’s expression was inscrutable. “I heard that those who commit crimes inadvertent but terrible are summoned here. I am one of those.”

“And when you were having your very pleasant time, due northwest of here is my guess, with people who hate me and who, without doubt, adore you, why didn’t you just stay there where it’s oh so pretty and pleasant, and where, without doubt, they sang your praises?”

The Raker averted his eyes. Perhaps, for him, that was equal to kneeling.

He was silent for a while. His jaw moved. Then the Raker spoke, in a flat tone. “I harmed my sister. I do not wish that erased. Those who seek to erase my crime, for whatever reason, are not serving me. They are serving themselves.”

Horror reflects in Ulín’s eyes, and her mouth opens, but I shush her. “Do not ask me that question. Please wait. Hear my story like I have heard yours.”

“If you wish to be served,” Ladder said, “you came to the wrong place.”

The Raker shrugged. “Every place is wrong.”

Ladder uncrossed his arms. “Very well. If you want to learn, I will teach you. But this is not Che Mazri. I will not coddle you. In the first circle of training, you must be prepared to kill at my word, or be killed.”

The Raker shrugged again.

I think to get rid of him, the Headmaster gave him hard challenges that very same day. Three students at once, all of them in the first circle, but after months of hard training. The Raker was not prepared to be killed that day, nor was he prepared to tarry. When they attacked him, I saw his rage flare like a blazing explosion in his mind, and he dealt swiftly with his assailants. None were killed that I saw, but neither would they get up.

“What a joke,” spat the Headmaster. “Do you think assassination is about beating people up and throwing them about, or flailing at them with your deepnames?”

“Bird peck you to a thousand bloody pieces,” said the Raker.

The Headmaster raised his right arm to the sky, and his fist clenched open and close, as if to choke someone high up in the air. “What do you think Bird can do to me? She knows where to find me.”

At his command, three more students rushed at the Raker. They were even more experienced, all three armed with dirks and swirling about. This time, the newcomer did not hesitate. It was crudely done, and fast. Three times, the Orphan Star’s embers flared and faded.

I expected praise or at least some acknowledgment from the Headmaster, but he looked as angry as before. “Rage and raw capacity will only carry you so far. You must learn the body.”

“If you think I will sleep with you, think again,” said the Raker.

“I do not invite you to sleep with me, youth. I invite you to study the body.”

“I will not submit,” the Raker snarled. “No matter what you call it.”

Ladder suddenly laughed. “Oh, this is rich. Did my erstwhile lover send you here to try to slay me? Or did you perhaps volunteer?”

“No,” the Raker said, too fast. “I came for the reasons I told you.”

I did not understand much of this exchange, but I sensed that Ladder had gained the upper hand, the Raker defensive and sullen.

Ladder said, “Go find yourself room among the others in the first circle. I doubt you’ll enjoy it, but these are the rules of this court. Work hard, and you will meet the Orphan.”

I did not talk to the Raker after that, but I watched him out of the corners of my eyes. He was determined and driven, relentlessly angry and unbeatable. I heard that the others in his room gave him a wide berth, as if they were afraid of him, but I learned from observing that he would wait for others to rush him before striking. He would not attack first.

It took me years to leave the first circle, but the Raker was speedier. Within a few months, in the night, I heard the iron clang of the trapdoor open and close.

The next day, the Headmaster told me that the Raker had perished in the Orphan. “It is a relief,” he said, “to have him gone.” But his eyes betrayed such agitation that I had to look away. It took four long days for that agitation to settle in Ladder’s eyes, and trainings returned to a semblance of normal instead of the previous frenzy.

Deep at night, I was lying in my too-shallow pool trying to breathe well enough to sleep, when the door creaked open. I surfaced, sputtering but ready to strike, but it was only the Raker. He came inside and flung himself upon the spare bed.

“I heard there’s room here,” he said. “I guess I’m in second circle now.”

I did not know what to say. How could you spend five whole nights in the Orphan Star and come back to the land of the living? I barely survived the one!

What I said was, “Nobody wanted to room with me before. Are you sure?”

The Raker grunted.

My thoughts churned on. What did you see when you descended? How did the Headmaster know to extend his ladder to you when he thought you were dead?

I thought the flatness of my despair would be there forever, but now curiosity stirred within me once more, like a tiny sparkle of sunrise in the wave. I settled for something simple.

“Did the Orphan shorten or lengthen your deepnames?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I sat up in my pool, trying to breathe levelly. There was never enough water here, and it dried out. The transitions between air and water bothered me more than I wanted to let on.

At last, I told him, “Assassins need to have matched deepnames. One and one, Shraga. Two and two, Dirks. Three and three, Garottes. And so on. The star tempers us to this pattern.”

“Nobody touches my deepnames.”