Seyun stood up from the gravel scuff mark beside the white-oak post and brushed the dust off his knee without making a single excuse about the morning sun in his eyes, the length of his staff, or the ninety days he had spent away from live steel.
Remembering Nara Soth’s parting advice at the southern highway fork—Don’t let him bait you onto his outside shoulder on the first pass. He always sets the first plane half a hand wide to see which way you like to pivot—Seyun couldn’t help grinning at himself. Nara had warned him three months ago from three hundred years of sword memory. He had walked straight through that exact three-finger door anyway. That was because the movement felt so comfortable in his wrists.
Up on the porch rail, Daro was already turning his victory into a quick thirty-breath teaching point for the fourteen pupils. He pointed with the tip of his short sword toward the crescent mark Seyun’s boot had left in the gravel.
“Kes, tell the first row what happened on the third breath,” Daro called up to his senior student.
Kes leaned over the rail so the younger children could follow his finger. “Master Seyun’s Answering Edge is faster at revising a blocked line than almost any spear or sword style in the valley. Because it’s so good at finding a second door when the first one closes, Master Daro didn’t try to lock both doors. He left the outside door three fingers open…
