His voice is mild, conversational, the kind that says I'm just making pleasant conversation while his eyes say something else entirely.
"The twins," Evran says. "Do you know if they're in the family wing?"
"Couldn't say. But if you're looking for company, Torsten was asking after you this morning." Dane tilts his head, and the gesture is so studied it looks rehearsed. "He's training outside the stronghold. I could take you to him."
Evran was not looking for Torsten. He was looking for Tria's uncomplicated laughter and Arin's quiet warmth, for the brief respite of being around people who want nothing from him except his presence. But the opportunity is here, standing in the corridor wearing a short sword and an expression of carefully cultivated disinterest, and Evran has learned over the past week that opportunities in this place do not announce themselves twice.
"That would be kind of you," Evran says. "Thank you."
Dane nods and turns without another word, and Evran follows.
They move through the stronghold, out through a side gate Evran has not used before, and into the sprawl of the stronghold town beyond the Keep's main walls. The town is alive with the daily commerce of a functioning settlement, market stalls and smithies and a tanner's yard that Evran can smell before he sees, and Dane navigates it with the ease of mapped territory.
They walk for a while, longer than Evran expected.
The town thins. The market stalls give way to workshops, the workshops to storage buildings, the storage buildings to empty lots and low stone walls marking the boundary between the settled area and the surrounding farmland. The noise of the town fades behind them and the path narrows.
Evran becomes aware of how far they are getting from the Keep.
He notes it the way Kellin taught him to note things, not with panic but with assessment. The distance from the gate. The number of people in sight, which is decreasing. The terrain, open on the left and bordered by a line of trees on the right. The fact that Dane is walking slightly ahead of him, which means Evran can see his hands but not his face. The weight of Bran's dagger strapped to his calf beneath his trousers, the steel warm against his skin, which is a comfort he would not have had a week ago.
He pretends it does not bother him.
He keeps his stride easy, his shoulders relaxed, his expression pleasant. He asks Dane about the weather, and Dane gives a monosyllabic answer. He asks about the tournament, and Dane says he did not attend. He asks about the Windfar clan's homeland and receives a grunt that is not quite an answer and not quite a dismissal.
Dane is not interested in conversation. Dane is interested in delivering a package.
They pass a stretch of abandoned fencing, the posts weathered and leaning. Beyond it, a cluster of outbuildings that look unused, storage sheds, maybe, or seasonal shelters for livestock that have been empty since the winter. The area is quiet, sparsely populated, the nearest occupied building a farmstead a quarter mile back with its chimney sending a thin line of smoke into the pale sky.
Just when Evran is certain, with a cold, creeping certainty that settles in his gut, that this man is taking him to the woods to dispose of him, they come around the side of an empty stable and the clearing opens up before them.
Torsten is there.
He is in the center of the clearing, sparring with the stocky, ruddy-faced man from the ale room, the one whose name Evranstill does not know, the one who had called him sloppy seconds and laughed about it over his perpetually full cup. They are circling each other with practice swords, wooden blades that clack and thud with each exchange, their movements quick and focused.
Evran stops at the edge of the clearing. Dane gives him a nod that says you're here, my job is done, and turns to leave.
"Thank you," Evran says to his retreating back.
Dane does not acknowledge it. He disappears around the stable and is gone.
Evran sits down on an overturned log near the edge of the clearing and watches.
He registers, immediately, that Torsten is sparring on the outskirts of the stronghold, not within the training grounds where the tournament bouts are held, where warriors from all clans practice under the eyes of their leaders and their peers, but out here where no one is watching, where no one can see. The choice is deliberate, and the reason for it becomes clear within the first thirty seconds of observation.
Torsten is a terrible fighter.
Not untrained, not entirely. He knows the basics, the guard positions, the footwork patterns, the vocabulary of combat. But he executes them badly, with the sloppy confidence of someone who learned the motions without ever learning why they matter. His feints come a full beat too late, telegraphed so clearly that a competent opponent could read them, sidestep, and take his head before the feint completed. His footwork is scrambling rather than structured, reactive instead of anticipatory, the movement of someone who is always one step behind the exchange. He leaves openings wide enough to drive a cart through, his left side unguarded every time he commits to a right-hand strike, his chin up when it should be tucked, his weight forward when it should be centered.
And the stocky man is letting him win.
Evran sees it immediately, because Kellin taught him to see it, the way the stocky man pulls his strikes short, the way he steps into Torsten's attacks instead of around them, the way he leaves his own openings conveniently placed for Torsten to exploit. It is a sparring partner's performance, carefully calibrated to make the weaker fighter feel strong, and Torsten does not notice. He drives the stocky man back with a series of strikes that would get him killed in the tournament rings, and he grins with each one, and the stocky man lets him.
It makes sense, Evran thinks. If the man has been picking at scraps his whole life, the unwanted son, the unacknowledged blood, always on the outside looking in, then he would never have had the formal training of the clans. He would have learned to fight in the margins, in alleys and back rooms and the spaces between civilized things, piecing together a fighting style from whatever was available, borrowing and stealing and improvising, and the result would be exactly this: flashy, full of holes, and propped up by sycophants who know better than to let the boss lose.
This is why he trains out here where no one can see. Not because his style is dishonorable. Because it is inadequate, and somewhere beneath the confidence and the vanity, Torsten knows it.
Evran watches Torsten swing wide on a strike that leaves his entire torso exposed for a full two seconds, and he thinks about the difference between this and what Kellin teaches. Kellin teaches discipline, control, teaches you to fight so that you can choose not to fight, so that the violence is a tool you wield rather than a force that wields you. Kellin would have Torsten on the ground inside three exchanges.
