He hits the sprint finish already at full speed and clears the hides quickly. He's in the running to win, something the crowd seems to know, and the noise they make is significant.
He comes back breathing harder than the clearing ever makes him, the first flush of real exertion visible at the back of his neck, and he finds me in the crowd with a look that is several degrees more than just pleased with himself.
"Well?" he says.
I'm aware that I've been watching him with slightly more transparency than I'd intended, and that there isn't much I can do about that now except not make it worse.
"Might have been the fastest," I say.
His grin is immediate. "Let's see if I'll hold it."
11
URSIK
The waiting is the worst part of any competition. Not for me — I don't do waiting, I do standing near waiting while making it someone else's problem — but around me the crowd has settled into that specific restless energy of people who've already seen the best of it and aren't sure if the remainder will deliver.
I'm still thinking about her sayingmight have been.
Notwas.Not even a concession.Might have been.Like she was leaving herself room to retract it if I got too pleased about it, which I did, which she clocked immediately, which is why she saidmight.I've started to understand the architecture of how she gives things and then shores up the gap immediately after, and understanding it doesn't make it less effective, it just means I see it coming and get hit by it anyway.
The competitors cycle through. I track the times in my head without meaning to — habit from years of knowing where I stand in any given ranking — and I'm still holding the front position, though two of the younger guards came close enough that I'm not comfortable yet. Kerra is making a face at me from across the yard that communicates she finds this appropriate.
Aislin is standing beside me. Not close, but close enough that I'm aware of it in the specific way I've been aware of distance between us since around the third morning in the clearing, when she'd corrected my grip demonstration without asking and then stepped back like she was checking whether that had been a mistake. She'd filed that away, and I'd filed away the fact that she'd done it, and we'd both gotten on with the session, and that was the shape of things.
She's watching the course. I've watched her watching the course for the last twenty minutes, and I know what that look is, because it's the look I wear when I'm reading terrain. She's been mapping it since we got here.
Which means she's thinking about running it.
The rotation lands on her name before I've finished thinking it.
Drogath, who has been calling competitors with the gravity of a man announcing fates rather than obstacle courses, unfurls his parchment slightly for no reason I can identify and announces her name. She'd been added to the list — I know because I'd mentioned to Drogath, as an aside, that several of the newer members might want the chance to participate if they wished, and Drogath had written it down with the enthusiasm of a man receiving prophecy.
The crowd doesn't know her. There's a murmur, curious rather than hostile, but it's a lot of noise from a lot of large bodies, and I feel rather than see the change in her.
It's the smallest thing. A tightening. The way her weight shifts back a fraction, the chin that's always up dropping just barely, the particular stillness that isn't her ready-to-fight stillness but something under it — the part of her that hasn't decided yet whether this is safe.
In three weeks of mornings I've seen her stare down a hold she couldn't break and come back harder. I've seen her hit theground and get up before I'd finished the motion of stepping back. I've never seen this version, the one that looks less like fire and more like something trying to decide if there's enough fire left.
I don't think about it. I just jump in, give her something to focus on.
"You're going to be slow," I tell her.
Her head turns. The familiar sharpening happens in her face, the one that meansI am about to need all of your attention for what I'm about to say to you.
"I haven't moved yet."
"Exactly." I fold my arms. "You're already slow. Standing there looking at it like that. Hare doesn't hesitate, that's the whole point, Drogath's been very clear on this."
"Drogath found a pamphlet."
"About a rabbit," I confirm. "An extremely instructive pamphlet. The Long-Ear Bringer doesn't hesitate."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Something shifts in her expression — not quite the thing I wanted yet, but closer, the calculation behind her eyes moving from the crowd and the noise and the unfamiliar bodies to the more comfortable problem of me being irritating.
"My time is going to beat yours," she says.
There it is.
