Jian found a clear patch of yard and moved the hammer out of it.
Then he moved the bucket, two loose boards and the stool Felix had placed precisely where he intended to finish.
Felix watched from the workshop door.
“That last one was part of the plan.”
“I know.”
“The comfortable part.”
“It will still exist afterward.”
Jian set a plain stone between two chalk lines. Beside it he put a cup of water, his testing needle and a wooden counter large enough to sit flat on a palm.
Felix approached with his wrist supported against his body. He looked at the objects, then at the retreating stool.
“Can the opening stance be sitting?”
“If we practice sitting.”
“I’ve already achieved a promising level.”
Jian let himself smile. “Today you won’t release qi at all.”
Felix’s expression improved.
“That sounds efficient.”
It wasn’t the answer Jian would have expected from someone who had moved three armed men across a bridge with one release. But he’d seen Felix after the second effort, pale on a board while the healer examined his arm. There was nothing enviable about that part.
He touched the stone with two fingers and took his own stance.
The flow was small. He drew it steadily through his hand, nudged the stone forward and let it stop against the farther chalk line. A little dust settled beyond it.
“Foot first,” he said. “Then weight. Then the action. End it before you move away.”
“My deck tracks the route.”
“Can it plant your heel?”
“It could record what happened when I didn’t.”
“That would be useful afterward.”
He moved the stone aside. Felix would use the counter, passing it from his good hand onto a low stand. No force, no strain in the bandaged arm. Chest pain or dizziness ended the lesson.
Felix listened more closely when the limits were specific. Jian had noticed that. General warnings invited him to argue with the word general.
“Twenty minutes,” Jian said. “Including rest.”
“You negotiate like a cable operator.”
“He seems successful.”
The first position was easy. Felix stood over the chalk marks and bent his knees enough to make an expression about it. His left hand held the counter. The stand waited slightly forward and to one side.
“Don’t reach yet. Settle your weight.”
“Settled.”
“Your heel is lifting.”
Felix looked down. His heel lowered.
He carried the counter forward, turned toward the stool and began sitting before he’d released it.
There was no stool beneath him.
His feet scrambled. Jian stepped close without grabbing the injured side. Felix caught himself with a short backward step, while the counter dropped onto the folded cloth below the stand.
They both looked at the stool, which stood well beyond any reasonable sitting distance.
“Interesting placement,” Jian said.
“I was expecting to make more progress.”
“Toward the stand or the chair?”
Felix considered that.
“The chair.”
Jian checked his breathing. No new pain. They waited until his pulse had settled, then moved the exercise so the stool wasn’t behind him at all.
“What changed first?” Jian asked.
“The chair stopped being where I wanted it.”
“Did it move?”
“Not independently.”
Jian waited.
Felix looked at his own chalk marks.
“I moved before I finished.”
“Yes.”
He demonstrated without qi, placing the counter slowly. His shoulder stayed over the planted foot until his fingers had opened. Then he brought the hand back and shifted his weight.
Felix watched the knee this time rather than the counter.
“Again,” he said.
Jian repeated it.
They shortened the reach. Felix tried, stopped halfway and frowned.
“The stand is farther away when I’m holding something.”
“Your arm moves your weight with it.”
“Rude.”
He adjusted his foot, asked Jian to check it and completed the movement. The counter landed flat on the stand.
“Good,” Jian said.
Felix remained in position, looking faintly suspicious.
“That’s all?”
“You did it correctly.”
He straightened, pleased despite himself.
“I could put this on a certificate.”
“After you’ve done it twice.”
A breeze carried sawdust across the chalk marks.
A shout came from the service shelf. Tamsin wanted the next load held while she checked a brace. Jian answered, then glanced toward the line of trees where the temporary support met old stone.
Felix followed his gaze. “Do you need to go?”
“Not yet. She’s measuring.”
“You can tell from here?”
“She said hold. When she wants a flow test, she’ll say that.”
Felix nodded, then looked at the counter on the stand.
“I keep wanting to fix the next thing before I’ve finished the one I’m doing.”
Jian had expected an argument about the stool. The admission surprised him.
“That was my problem with a spear,” he said.
“Really?”
“I wanted the strike after the one I was making. My teacher hit my hand with a reed until I stopped offering it to him.”
Felix looked at Jian’s empty hands.
“Your methods have improved.”
“You’re already bandaged.”
Felix laughed, then took a careful breath when his chest objected. Jian waited. The laugh had not hurt much, but it reminded them both why the exercise was small.
He offered to shorten the reach again.
Felix shook his head. “This one’s comfortable. I just need to stay here until it’s done.”
“Show me.”
He did. The counter reached the stand. His hand came back. Both feet stayed where he’d put them.
Jian recognized the satisfaction before Felix looked up. It was the same quiet pleasure he’d felt when his teacher had finally stopped raising the reed.
From the shelf, Tamsin called that the brace was ready for a later test. Jian acknowledged her and laid the measuring rod across the two unused marks. They had enough time to find a repeatable position, provided neither man tried to finish tomorrow’s work in it.
The next attempt went well too. On the third, his left shoulder wandered ahead of his knee. Jian tapped the chalk with the end of the measuring rod before Felix could overreach. He stepped back and reset.
They rested. Honest ambient qi continued its slow circulation without entering the damaged route. Jian could see no flare at the arm, no attempt to sneak power into the exercise.
Felix leaned over his notebook.
“Can we mark the point where it goes wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“Not guess from a successful one. Find the longest reach I can do without leaning out. Then put the mark somewhere inside that.”
Jian looked at the clear yard. A sensible test, provided they didn’t turn it into a contest against falling.
“Short steps. You stop when I say.”
They tried two closer placements. Then a longer one made Felix’s heel begin to lift. Jian called the stop before the hand reached the stand.
Felix put a small cross beside the nearest successful distance.
“That one feels boring.”
“It is the one you can repeat.”
“Then boring has a future.”
He made a second mark and wrote beside it with his left hand. Jian bent to see the note.
“Ambitious chair?”
“A technical cause.”
A brass shape landed on the workshop rail.
“That word is illegible,” Barnaby said.
Felix looked up while beginning the next transfer.
The counter slid off his fingers onto the cloth.
He stared down at it.
“You arranged that.”
“The verbal distraction?” Jian said. “Yes.”
“I did not arrange the handwriting,” Barnaby added.
Jian picked up the counter. “You turned your shoulder when you turned your head.”
“I wanted to defend my professional notes.”
“They survived. Your stance didn’t.”
Felix examined the cross on the ground, then Barnaby.
“Can you insult me again?”
“I charge for scheduled instruction.”
Jian laughed before he could stop himself. Barnaby’s amber eyes turned toward him.
“Your invoice will distinguish materials from labor.”
“An ordinary question will do,” Jian said.
For the next attempt, Barnaby asked Felix whether he’d seen a small brass washer. Felix answered without moving his shoulder. He set the counter down, brought his hand back and only then turned.
“No.”
“Neither have I. That’s why I asked.”
The counter stayed on the stand.
Jian nodded. “Good.”
At the gate, Lyra waited for the hauler to finish checking the empty basket. She came up the path carrying her satchel and a board of papers, her face set in the way it became when somebody had tried to be reasonable at her expense.
She stopped at the chalk marks.
“Sword footwork?”
“Not falling,” Felix said.
“Useful before the sword.”
She laid the papers on the bench and watched one repetition. Felix kept his heel down. His left fingers opened, the counter landed flat, and he returned to his starting position without looking for a chair.
“That looked better,” she said.
“You didn’t see the others.”
“The cloth suggests preparations.”
Jian checked the time by the shadow crossing his rod.
“Finished.”
Felix looked up sharply.
“I’ve only just learned it.”
“You’ve learned enough for today.”
“One more. I can do the farther mark now.”
“We agreed twenty minutes.”
Felix glanced at the rod, then at his notebook as though one of them might contain an appeal.
Lyra pulled the stool closer with her boot.
“You can complete the final part of your original plan.”
He sat.
For a moment nobody spoke. The wind moved the workshop shutter against its loose catch. Somewhere beyond the wall, Tamsin told a loader to wait while she checked the second support mark.
Jian drank from the cup, then offered it to Felix. He accepted it with his good hand and drank without making a joke.
That pleased Jian more than it probably should have.
He wrote a short practice sequence. Feet, weight, hand, finish, return. No qi release. Stop for pain or dizziness. Nothing about mastering the world before supper.
Felix read it.
“When’s the next lesson?”
“When your condition permits it. We can repeat the positioning tomorrow.”
“Not at dawn.”
“Midmorning. I have my own practice first.”
“Excellent. I’ll respect it from a distance.”
Jian handed him the counter rather than leave it at the far mark. Felix put it beside the stool, clearly finished with it.
Lyra took the other seat. Jian noticed the new notice on top of her papers but did not ask about it in front of the open gate. She would say what she wanted to say.
“May I check the ambient loop?” he asked Felix.
Felix passed him the deck.
The display showed a modest increase. No sudden restoration payment, no convenient replacement for the returned balance. Jian set his testing needle beside the small contact and waited for it to settle.
He’d first assumed Felix’s advantage must conceal something ugly or unstable. Now the ugly branch was gone and this quiet portion remained, doing what Felix had said it did.
Lyra moved the old saucer beneath the outer line. A little dry plaster rested on it. Nothing stirred.
Felix reclined, eyes half closed, breathing no more dramatically than a man enjoying a good stool could manage.
The needle held steady.
Jian compared the reading to the deck, waited through another cycle and checked the return. Small intake. Clean release of waste. No surge toward the sealed branch.
“This works,” he said.
Felix opened one eye.
“I did mention it.”
“You mentioned many things. This one is demonstrated.”
A smile spread across Felix’s face, unhurried and annoyingly satisfied.
Jian gave the deck back. He had paid for that expression with an honest finding and would have to endure it.
“Do you want to learn it?” Felix asked.
The question had no flourish. No demand that Jian admit his teachers were fools.
“Yes,” Jian said. “When you’re rested.”
Felix closed his eye again.
“Finally, a training requirement I can exceed.”
Jian collected his needle and the practice stone. Lyra bent over the notice beside her knee. The cup was empty, so he took it toward the kitchen before returning to the test supports.
Behind him, the counter remained exactly where Felix had put it.