Two long pine frame stand tables had been set out along the shaded wooden porch directly beneath the repaired black slate roof edges. One for the fourteen pupils, Archivist Vel, and Mother Renn, and a smaller corner table by the rail where Seyun and Daro Kesh sat with steaming bowls of wheat noodles and blanched garden kale between them.
They had barely picked up their wooden chopsticks before the argument over the third exchange began in earnest.
“Look at the chalk ring on my cuff,” Daro said. He pointed the tips of his chopsticks at the white circle on his left sleeve without bothering to brush the powder off. “I’m not denying the metal ring touched the cloth first. What I’m telling you is that the only reason you had to crowd your left hand into the post shadow and leave the middle of your shaft exposed to my wrist-hook is because you still treat a stance as a response to my blade line. If you had built a wider, self-contained two-handed guard at the edge of the gravel before I pivoted, you could have checked my second reversal without feeding me your staff!”
Seyun swallowed a mouthful of hot, sesame-scented noodles and pointed his own chopsticks right back at Daro’s sword sheath.
