They'd found a quiet corner before class, the two of them, which in a school this size required actual effort.
It didn't last.
Two boys came over from Mukai's table with the unhurried confidence of people who had never been told to stop. One looked at Moto and wrinkled his nose. "Smells like smoke in here."
Sheu's hand found Moto's arm. She pulled, steering, already calculating the path out. The other boy reached for her.
Moto's hand came down on his wrist before the grip could close - a sharp, flat crack that snapped across the room. The boys laughed, which was the wrong response, and the situation started moving quickly in one direction until the water hit.
It rose between them out of nowhere, a solid shimmering wall, and Moto skidded to a halt with his fist still drawn back.
The water parted. Mukai stepped through it, palms open, water still running off his fingers. His blue hair was pushed back from his face and he had the particular stillness of someone who expected to be listened to.
"No fighting in my class."
"He started it," Moto said.
"Don't make me repeat myself."
"Drop the act." Moto's voice stayed even. "I saw them come from your desk."
Something moved through Mukai's expression - brief, controlled, gone. "We don't tolerate insubordination here. Especially from people who didn't earn the right to be here."
"Says the Prince?"
The classroom went very quiet. Across the room, half-concealed behind the group gathered near the back wall, a boy with the same face as Mukai but softer - longer blue hair, lighter build - watched with an expression pulled tight with worry.
Mukai flicked his wrist. The water wall collapsed sideways, most of it landing on Moto, and he turned away. "Stay behind after class."
The elemental session went worse.
Moto's assigned teacher looked through him for the duration, as though he were a smudge on the wall that would resolve itself if ignored long enough. Moto set his jaw and decided to try something.
He pushed the smoke out through his skin - not just exhaling it, but pressing it from every pore at once, the way he'd been turning over in his mind since he watched those students handle fire like it was nothing. It came out in sharp jets, like steam off a kettle.
The laughter started immediately. Then someone threw a small fireball into the cloud, because of course they did, and the whole thing ignited around him in a series of small muffled pops that left a scatter of burns across his arms and neck.
He stood in the thinning smoke and didn't say anything.
Sheu found him in the cafeteria at break, sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a look on his face he was doing a poor job of hiding.
They sat together and didn't perform optimism at each other, which was its own kind of comfort.
"Hi." A voice, soft and unhurried. "Mind if I join you?"
The boy standing at the edge of their table had long blue hair and fair skin and a face that would have been immediately familiar if the expression on it weren't so completely different from the one they'd seen that morning.
"Sure," Moto said, sitting up slightly. "Though you might want to think twice about being seen with the bottom students."
"That makes three of us, then." The boy smiled. "I'm Sukai."
Something eased in the air. Moto almost laughed, and Sheu did, quietly.
Sheu tilted her head. "You look exactly like Mukai."
"He's my twin," Sukai said.
Moto stared at him. "No."
"I'm serious."
"But you're so-" Moto stopped himself, then didn't. "You're so nice."
Sukai's smile became something more complicated. "That's what everyone says." He set his tray down and sat. "He's misunderstood."
"What's there to misunderstand? You were there."
"I was," Sukai said simply. "But please - keep your distance while I try to get through to him. I think I can."
Moto studied him for a moment. Whatever Sukai had that his brother didn't, it was doing its job. "Alright. The good twin has my trust."
Sukai looked quietly pleased by that.
Sheu asked, after a beat, whether the King's sons could have been kept out of school entirely - homeschooled, away from all of this.
Sukai shook his head. "Father doesn't believe in it. He thinks a leader has to know what it's actually like to be a citizen. If any of us is going to succeed him, we have to earn that."
"He sounds wise," Moto said.
"He is," Sukai said, and meant it.
Far from any of that - past Nyika's borders, down through rock and dark into a cave that had been made into something more than a cave - a spear hit the ground.
It came from above, punching through into the bunker with a sound like a final word, gold metal catching the little light there was. A strand of royal blue string was tied to the shaft, and attached to the string, a small rolled note.
The woman who stepped forward to take it had purple hair and purple eyes and the kind of face that made people underestimate how much she was paying attention. She unrolled the note slowly. Read it. Said nothing for a moment.
Then she smiled - slow, satisfied, and not entirely pleasant.
"Looks like we have work, ladies."
The assembled assassins shifted. Uneasy glances moved around the room. One spoke up, barely above a whisper. "That sounds risky."
The woman looked at him, and the smile didn't move. She laid out the details then - the bounty, the scope of it, the target - and the room got quieter with every sentence in a way that had nothing to do with calm.
One assassin pressed forward, brow furrowed. "What's the plan?"
The woman considered this. Her expression settled into something resolved and precise and without mercy.
"Good question," she said. "We start with the prince."
The word moved through the room like a current. Even here, among people who did dangerous things for money, the mention of him landed with weight - his power, his reach, the particular difficulty of the problem he represented. No one spoke. The dark of the cave pressed in around them, and the gold spear still stood upright in the ground, catching the light.