Inside the roaring fire of the eastern returning trough, Daro Kesh’s newly reached Early Jade training met the doubled returning plane with the stubborn, close-range thickness that only a Black-Roof School swordmaster could generate. Two days ago in the lower yard, before he and Seyun had crossed the Jade threshold in their open bout, Daro had reforged his broken broadsword into a compact, thirty-inch short sword hammered from a collapsed Black-Roof fire rib. Sacrificing eight inches of reach so the blade would have no weak ringing node along its spine.
Against the inside half of the thickened four-inch returning plane, that dense, unbending thirty-inch blade performed magnificently. Daro dropped his balance point low over his knees and tucking his right elbow against his ribs. He locked his Early Jade breath into the thick belly of the fire-rib steel. He held the western edge of the doubled current six inches clear of the central hub lane so it couldn’t spill sideways across Seyun’s back.
White-hot sparks poured off the dark, hammer-rough flat of Daro’s short sword in a nonstop sheet that lit the dark rock trench brighter than noon. Through Place II beneath his right collarbone ten yards away, Seyun could feel the exact shape of Daro’s Early Jade pushback: solid as an iron anvil-block, fully free of panic, and anchoring the inside corner of the ditch without yielding a hair’s breadth.
