Chapter 55: What Is Necessary
The rods came at the third notch, and I was on my feet before the first strike landed.
I walked out of the curriculum room into the cold and I did not let the cold register in my shoulders. The formation mustered inside the count of one hundred. I took my place at the head of the formation.
I held my weight forward. I ran the cold water exercise at full count, not half. Fei Liao did not correct me. He watched the first soak from the bank and did not speak.
The drill ran through the fifth notch.
Weapons at the sixth. Pair work at the seventh. Load march at the ninth. I ran each of them clean. By the tenth notch the training ground felt the way it had felt in the weeks before the fires.
Fei Liao called dismissal. The formation broke.
I walked toward the clinic to eat. Suyin met me at the door with a bowl of rice.
"Thank you," I said, and I meant it.
"You look hungry."