Seyun stepped back onto the center flat stone slabs for the third twelve-breath pass. Then, the cold wind off the orchard smelled of dry apple leaves and wet ash paste.
He took his stance three paces behind Nara’s right heel. This time, as Mina turned the brass sand glass over on the curb, he didn’t pre-load his weight toward the right-hand pocket or the left-hand gap, and he didn’t build a mental diagram of where a textbook fighter ought to go after striking the timber. He held his Returning Step centered between his hips, kept his grip light over his bruised right knuckles. Then he let the silver curve beneath his left collarbone listen without pre-judging the answer.
Nara glided forward and drove the tip of her ash staff hard into the center cross-beam of the left wooden frame.
Crack.
The timber shuddered back toward them. Instead of guessing which way her boots would clear the rebound, Seyun stepped into the first contact to take the frame’s shock on the upper third of his staff and called out directly across the shaking wood:
“Where are you going?”
“Ditch line, three paces!” Nara barked back without slowing her stride.
The words took less than half a breath to cross the six feet between them. Seyun had asked rather than inferred. Because of that, he didn’t waste a split second translating her shoulder dip through his own preferences. The drainage ditch along the western edge of the threshing floor was uneven and…
