He doesn't say anything. That's almost worse.
We go through two more sequences. I'm functional. I'm not where I usually am. My head keeps pulling sideways to something that isn't the problem in front of me, and the problem in front of me is Ursik, who is patient about it in a way that somehow makes it more aggravating.
"Are you and Kerra together?" I say.
It comes out during a break between sequences, flat and conversational, like a question about weather. I watch him process it. And then he laughs.
It's not a chuckle. It's not even a regular laugh. It is a full-bodied, loud, startled roar of laughter that cracks out across the clearing and probably disturbs every bird in the birchwood, and I take a half-step back before I can stop myself, because the sheer volume of it is a physical thing.
But it's — it's a good sound. I notice that after the startle clears. It has no edge in it. It's completely undefended.
I've never heard him laugh like this. It's like I've always got the condensed version. And right now…I like seeing him unrestrained.
"Together." He gets the word out between the laughter, pressing one hand flat to his chest like he needs to contain it. "Me andKerra."
"It's not a strange question."
"It is an absolutely strange question." He's still laughing, quieter now, but the shape of it still on his face. "Kerra is like — she's like a younger sister to me. She's been around me my entire life. She used to follow me around the base and ask me questions about grips until I taught her just to make her stop." He shakes his head, the laughter tapering. "There has never been anything else. There will never be anything else. It would be like—" He makes a face of emphatic distaste. "No."
"Fine," I say.
"Why?" He tilts his head. The gray eyes are doing something specific, not quite a smirk but adjacent to one, waiting to see if I'll give him anything. "Did I look like I was taken?"
"You two looked familiar," I say, and I keep my voice even when I say it, because my voice can be managed even when the thing underneath it is being less cooperative. "It was a tactical question."
"A tactical question."
"About the situation."
"Ah." He nods, solemn. "Very strategic."
"Are you going to spar or are you going to be insufferable."
"Both," he says, moving forward. "Simultaneously. I'm talented."
I should not like the fact that he's not seeing anyone. I know I shouldn't. I know what that kind of information does when it takes root — the particular gravity of it, how it starts to pull other things toward it without asking permission. I know what thatleads to. I know exactly what trusting the feeling that someone is yours to worry about ends up costing.
I know all of that and I can construct the entire argument against it without pausing for breath.
And I still like the sound of it.
I move first this time, and he meets me, and I put that knowledge somewhere it can't get at me while I work.
10
AISLIN
The week passes in mornings.
That's how I've started to measure time here, which is strange, because I used to measure it in threats. How long since the Stonevein fed us. How long since they rotated guards. How long since someone checked the perimeter. Time as a series of windows and gaps and things to prepare for.
Now I measure it in the clearing, in frost and birch and the specific cold that comes at dawn before the sun commits to anything.
We spar every morning. That is all it is. He shows me something, I work at it until I've got the shape of it, he pushes back, and I push back harder, and we do that until the sun is fully up and the base has started moving around us and there's no longer any reason to still be standing in the clearing. Then I walk back to the cabins and he walks back to the longhouses and that's the end of it.
Except it isn't quite, anymore.
I don't know when that shifted. Somewhere in the middle of the week I stopped leaving the moment we finished, and I didn't make a decision about it — I just didn't walk away quite when Iwould have before. He said something about the foot sweep I'd been working on, how I was telegraphing it in my left shoulder before I committed to it, and I'd argued, and the argument had taken another ten minutes standing in the clearing while the frost melted off the grass around us, and then I'd walked back and thought about it the rest of the morning.
