By late morning, the sun had burned the valley mist off the lower terrace of the seal court, leaving the crushed granite gravel damp and glittering. Bel Sar stood in the center of the terrace lane with his six-foot mountain ash staff held diagonally across his chest. His hands spaced three was full arm-lengths apart on the oil-rubbed wood. Seyun, Ilyra, Daro, and Commander Keth Or stood in a semicircle five paces back.
“Most people who haven’t held a staff keeper’s post think Bronze in wood works the same as Bronze in steel,” Bel said. He tapped the iron shoe of his weapon against a buried cobble. “When Daro puts his Bronze—or his Jade now—into a sword, he wants the edge to hold a single sharp plane that refuses to bend. When Lady Ilyra puts hers into a spearhead, she wants the point to branch outward from the tip. If you try to make six feet of mountain ash act like a rigid iron bar against a superior blow, the cross-grain snaps right between your thumbs.”
Before Keth Or stepped in with the heavy practice broadsword to test Bel Sar’s staff, Seyun walked up to Bel in the center of the terrace lane and asked to hold the six-foot mountain ash pole in his own hands for a moment.
