For three full breaths after the ash staff clattered against the well curb, the fourteen pupils along the porch rail were so quiet that the bubbling of the noodle cooking pot in the kitchen could be heard across the gravel.
Then eleven-year-old Benn leaned over the rail with his eyes wide. “Who won the third exchange, Mother Renn? Master Seyun put the white chalk ring on Master Daro’s sleeve first. Then Master Daro threw Master Seyun’s stick across the yard!”
Down at the side garden gate, Mother Renn stood up from her three-legged stool, brushed a sesame seed off her apron. Then she pointed her hornbeam stick first at Daro’s left shoulder and then at the ash staff lying beside the well.
“Both results stand on the book!” Renn called out in a clear, carrying voice so Archivist Vel could write it down at the study window. “On the third exchange, Seyun held his Jade purpose through two changed depths of the short sword and landed a clean metal ring touch on Daro’s left sleeve. Half a breath later, before he could recover his guard from the inside pocket, Daro caught the shaft and disarmed him cleanly. Neither half erases the other!”
