Daro Kesh said nothing to Kes at the well-curb that night. A good teacher doesn’t interrogate an exhausted student in the dark when a morning stance check in clear daylight will show the exact line of the fault without guesswork. Instead, Daro waited until first light on the fifth morning. Just then, the hoarfrost lay white across the purple turnip crowns and the pale smoke of the kitchen stove rose straight into the windless alder tops.
Before deciding how they would use the scorched route stone carving to approach the Hollow Summit, Daro called Kes, Bren, and Tella into the widest dirt lane running down the center of the vegetable garden between the cabbage beds and the stone well. Seyun and Ilyra sat on the dry porch steps with mugs of hot boiled water in their hands, while inside the hall Archivist Vel spread his two completed, ink-dried linen backup copies of the Quiet Names across the hearth bench to air.
“Three weeks without a teacher’s eye is long enough for lazy heels to creep into a foundation,” Daro announced. He stood at the head of the dirt lane with a plain ash practice stick tucked beneath his left arm. “Take your wooden blades, space yourselves three paces apart between the cabbage rows, and give me the Four Outward Corners at half-rhythm. Breathe so I can hear the return through your shoulders, not through your teeth.”
