Landing in the frost-slick gravel of the eastern trough straddling Daro Kesh’s outstretched right leg, Seyun didn’t summon a miraculous new realm leap or a dramatic explosion of golden qi to turn to steam the diving pale blade. His body was already tired from two watches of high-sky climbing and blocking, his left calf stitches were damp with fresh blood inside his wool stocking. His Early Jade breath was the same narrow, honest central trunk he had brought out of the dark rock recess four breaths ago.
What he brought into the ditch was eleven years of foundation balance, a six-foot pole of seasoned Ash Reed wood. A narrow, economical Early Jade Answering Edge aimed at buying six yards of lateral drag.
As the six-foot pale blade of the upper ring shrieked down into the eastern trough at a forty-five-degree angle toward Daro’s collar, Seyun didn’t meet it with a static overhead block that would have driven his boots through the gravel and crushed Daro underneath him. Instead, dropping his left knee beside Daro’s hip, Seyun thrust the iron metal ring of his ash staff upward to touch the leading third of the dropping pale blade at a shallow twelve-degree tangent. While down by his waist, Daro Kesh brought the chipped thirty-inch fire-rib short sword up with his right hand to brace the lower third of the ash shaft.
