I understand exactly what she means. I've been understanding it all morning, in the spaces between every drill — the way Aislin checks my hands before she checks my face, the way she registers exactly where every exit is from the clearing, the way she logged my loud reaction and filed it underthreat databefore she'd even consciously decided to. Kerra doesn't need to explain this to me. But I let her, because she's doing it because she cares, and that's different.
"I'm not pushing," I say. "I swear it. I'm trying to help."
Kerra glances over, and I can see her trying to decide what to say. I know that she's one of the only people that sees both sides of me.
"I know what it looks like when someone has too much energy and a temper," I say. "I'm helping her learn to feel safe and giving her something to do that will keep her from going insane unlike pacing around those cabins." I pause. "I'm not nudging her into anything. I'm just — " I find the right word. "Showing up."
Kerra is quiet. She does that when she's revising her read on something, the same concentrated stillness she goes into before she changes strategy mid-spar.
"All right," she says, at last. "I know it was my suggestion, but I just want to make sure it helps, not hurts."
"I know what I'm doing," I add.
"I know you do." And that's the other thing about Kerra — when she's done warning you, she stops. No lingering. No repeated point. She decided to say it, she said it, and now she's moved on. She knocks her shoulder against mine again, lighter this time, the way that meansI trust yourather thanpayattention."Just making sure the loudest orc in the settlement remembers to use his inside voice."
"I only have one volume."
"Unfortunately."
I shoulder her back, and she grabs my arm to steady herself, laughing — a short, genuine thing — and then we are back at the main path and she's already splitting off toward the guard post, collar still undone, hands still loose.
I know she's looking out for me.
I just want Aislin to know what that's like too.
5
AISLIN
Five days.
Five days of the same clearing, the same grey-edged sunrise, the same orc showing up exactly when he said he would with his hair tied back and his expression already set tolet's work. Not before sunrise, not fashionably late.Whenhe said. Every time.
I notice everything.
The first day I'd catalogued him as a threat with good manners. The second day I'd revised that to a threat who was also, irritatingly, a good teacher. By the third day I'd stopped thinking of him as a threat in theimmediatesense, which is not the same as trusting him, but it's a different category and I keep my categories clean.
Today is day five and we are in the middle of something that has stopped being a drill and started being an argument, which happens with Ursik — the line between the two is thinner than it probably should be.
"You're dropping your left side," he says.
"I'm not."
"You are." He circles me. Not looming — moving, which is a distinction I've had to make with him because everything about his size wants to read as looming and he doesn't actually do it. He takes up space but he doesn't use it against you. "Every time you set your feet, left shoulder drops. You think you're leveling but you're not."
"My left shoulder is exactly where I want it."
"Where do you want it?"
"Level."
"Then it's not where you want it."
I turn my head to look at him. He looks back. His grey eyes hold the same expression they always hold during a session — patient, watchful, somewhere under it slightly amused in a way he doesn't bother to hide, which I've decided is preferable to false seriousness.
"Show me," I say.
He steps in close — measured, slow enough that I've got the full picture of it — and puts two fingers on my left shoulder. Not a grip. A point of contact, light enough that I could move through it without effort. He does this, the contact-not-grip thing, deliberately. I know he does it deliberately because I've seen him move when he's not close to me. He's fast and large. But he reads me carefully.
