I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities-Chapter 243: Eight Rounds

Up on the freezing upper deck that afternoon, Ryuken ordered Vane and Lancelot to spar.

He did not make a ceremony of it. He strolled up, told them to draw weapons and begin, and sat on the iron storage crate.

They began.

Vane hit the deck in four exchanges the first round. He got up. Down in six the second. Up. Down in five the third, which was marginally worse than the second and was exactly how things went when you stopped trying to force extension and started trying to understand something you did not yet have. Ryuken watched without comment.

After the fifth round he raised a hand. "Stop."

He looked at Lancelot. "What did you observe."

Lancelot was not breathing hard. "He telegraphs weight shifts. Five consistent patterns. They allow positional prediction before the physical commitment completes."

Ryuken: "Yes." He looked at Vane. "You heard that."

"Yes."

"He was not being helpful. He was logging tactical data on an opponent he has fought." A pause. "The information is accurate regardless. The Storm Step addresses three of those five patterns. We begin it at the compound." He stood. "Again. Three more rounds."

Vane looked at Lancelot. He had already reset to starting position and was waiting with the patience of something that does not experience waiting as a cost.

Vane reset.

Three more rounds. Down in four, five, four. The numbers were not moving in a straight line. They were not meant to. The courtyard had been the lesson about the height of the ceiling. This was the lesson about what was underneath it.

After the last round Ryuken went below without a word.

Lancelot returned to the railing.

Vane sat against the hull with his chest heaving and looked at the ocean and thought about five telegraphed weight-shift patterns and the ground he did not have underneath Heaven Gate.

The hatch banged open.

Ashe came up carrying three plates with the energy of someone who had been below deck being bored for two hours and had finally found a reason to move. She took one look at Vane against the hull, took one look at the deck, and her expression cycled through something before landing on the specific face she used when the situation was exactly as bad as she expected.

"Eight rounds," she said.

"Yes."

She dropped down beside him and thrust a plate into his hands. "You look like you got stepped on by a horse."

"Eight times."

"Same horse every time?"

"Same horse every time."

She looked across the deck at Lancelot, who was standing at the far railing with his back to them looking at the ocean like the previous two hours had contained nothing of particular note. She ate a bite of food. Her jaw was doing the thing it did when she had opinions she was deciding whether to share.

"Your footwork," she said.

"I know."

"I could see it from the hatch. Three of the five he named, I could see those from twenty meters away."

"I know."

She looked at him sideways. "Does it help to know what they are or do you need to find them yourself."

"Tell me."

She described them without softening any of it, the five patterns in sequence, the specific geometry of how each one telegraphed direction before the commitment completed. She spoke the way she spoke about training problems, which was directly and with no particular sympathy for how uncomfortable the information was, because the information was the point and discomfort was irrelevant.

He listened. He ate.

When she finished he said: "The Storm Step fixes three of them."

"Starting position, pivot, and the drop-step. Yes." She tore a piece of food off her plate. "The other two are not footwork problems. They are weight distribution problems. Iron Root fixes those eventually." She chewed. "Eventually."

He looked at the ocean.

"After dinner," she said, "come to the lower deck. I’ll run you through the first two beats of the Storm Step."

He looked at her.

"You have five days before the compound," she said, with the flat practicality of someone explaining why you bring a coat when it looks like rain. "Ryuken will teach you the full thing properly. But you’re going to spend those five days getting stepped on by the same horse for the same reason and I would rather you arrived having at least thought about it." She pointed at him with her fork. "Stop looking at me like that. It is not charity. It is efficient use of available time."

"I wasn’t going to say no."

"You were making a face."

"I wasn’t making a face."

"You were making the face you make when someone does something you didn’t ask for and you don’t know what to do with it." She went back to eating. "The Storm Step is mine to show you. My family’s. Ryuken doesn’t own it."

Vane looked at her.

She was eating with the focused energy she brought to most things, not looking at him, her horns catching the low afternoon light. She had watched eight rounds of him getting taken apart and had come up with food and a practical solution and delivered both without any of the softening language that other people wrapped useful things in, because Ashe did not wrap things.

"It feels wrong," she said, unprompted. "The first beat especially. For about three days it feels completely wrong. Then it doesn’t." She paused. "My father had me drill it until I threw up once. You probably won’t throw up."

"Probably."

"Probably," she agreed, and looked at the horizon with the specific expression of someone reconsidering a probability.

From the far railing, Lancelot had not moved.

Vane finished eating. He picked up the spear. He ran the forms from the beginning, all three, moving like a western spearman because that was still the only way his body knew how to move. But this time he kept his attention on the deck underneath his boots, on the five patterns, on what a foot going somewhere a body didn’t believe it was allowed to go was supposed to feel like.

Five days to the compound.

He had work to do.