Seyun raised his ash staff to center guard a second time, determined not to over-commit to the first bending. Across the two paces of frosted flat stone slab, Hall Mistress Soran didn’t right away thrust at his chest. Instead, she stepped within shaft-reach and tapped the flat of her iron spear lightly against the top of Seyun’s left collarbone, and then against his right.
Clack. Clack.
“Look at how you’re standing before I have even moved my point,” Soran said. She kept her dark eyes fixed on the junction of his neck and shoulders. “Why are your collarbones lifted half an inch toward your ears?”
Seyun blinked, glancing down at his own stance. Until her iron shaft tapped the bone, he hadn’t even been aware that he was holding tension across the top of his shoulder girdle. “I’m keeping my guard ready to take weight, Hall Mistress.”
“No,” Soran said briskly, tapping his left shoulder again with the cold iron shaft. “Your forearms and your lats take weight. Lifted collarbones take nothing except your own breath and your opponent’s eyes. Tell me how you spent your mornings between the ages of nine and twenty at Ash Reed Sect.”
“Sweeping the six hundred stone steps and the outer flat stone slab terraces,” Seyun answered, wondering what the broom had to do with Soran’s three-thrust set, “and hauling water buckets from the winter spring when the junior stewards called.”
