CHAPTER 57
Azra'il - POV
The hall in the Boreas north wing had been cleared of any useful furniture, leaving only the polished oak floorboards and two hired instrumental witnesses Madam Edna had brought in. The first, a middle-aged man holding a lute, wore the face of someone who'd realised, too late, that his life insurance didn't cover incidents involving the clan heiress. The second, a young flautist, kept her eyes fixed on the emergency exit with silent despair.
I stood watching the instruments with a clinical coldness that probably seemed inappropriate for the occasion.
The lute, in particular, stirred purely physical reflections in me. Gut strings tensioned over hollow wood; a simple mechanism that crossed worlds and eras without any idiot inventor deciding it needed complicating.
I'd been a musician in dozens of forms across lives that piled up in my consciousness like tax returns. I composed for emperors suffering from chronic migraines and performed strings in worlds whose tonal scales would make any local listener's ears bleed. In one remarkably absurd life, I worked as an idol singer who split her time between performances and piloting space combat mechs. A double career that, at the time, seemed the only sensible answer to paying the hangar's rent.
But the musical incarnation I held the most honest memory of was that of a travelling bard.
It had been a bohemian existence, with no grandeur whatsoever beyond the freedom to choose which filthy tavern I'd spend the previous night's accumulated copper coins in. Tavern audiences have an admirable purity: they don't want pompous speeches; they just want to forget that the region's average life expectancy is thirty years.
〈Eos, what was the final tally of that musical catalogue, exactly?〉
[Four hundred and thirty-seven songs recorded. Two hundred and nine featured highly suggestive metaphors aimed at human anatomy.]
〈Those tavern audiences demanded compositions with strong visual appeal, Eos. I was merely meeting market demand.〉
[Thirty-eight of those compositions used the noun "hills" with no actual rocky elevation described anywhere in the text.]
〈Topography is a wonderful lyrical tool for describing curves.〉
[In "The Blacksmith's Daughter's Two Hills," the narrative takes place entirely inside an urban cellar.]
〈The title held a perfectly valid poetic licence. I never promised a geology treatise.〉
[I'm aware of your creative flexibility. I also located the titles: "The Valley Where the Sun Doesn't Reach," "The Seamstress's Dangerous Curve," "The Harbour Every Sailor Wished to Dock In," and "The Widow Had Two Very Good Reasons."]
〈Profound critiques on the fragility of coastal defences and widows' inheritance rights, I assure you.〉
[In "The Widow Had Two Very Good Reasons," the verses exclusively describe the main character's neckline.]
〈They were weighty reasons, Eos. The audience defended them with enthusiasm.〉
[The audience was predominantly inebriated.]
〈The most honest demographic I've found in a thousand lives.〉
The dry sound of a body colliding with the polished oak interrupted my historical review. I didn't need to look back right away; the physics of a damp flour sack being thrown from a third-storey window has a very particular acoustic signature.
Rudeus had visited the floor again.
"Lady Eris," Edna intervened, with the artificial patience of a bailiff about to declare a bankruptcy. "The classical waltz requires that you follow your partner's tempo, not use his arm to test his joints' resistance."
"HE MOVES LIKE HE'S SUNK IN MUD!"
"Young Rudeus's rhythm was perfectly aligned with the lute."
"THEN THE LUTE IS BROKEN!"
Rudeus lifted himself off the floor with a groan indicating he was currently negotiating a temporary truce with his own kidneys. He was the fifth dance partner Eris had gone through since the lessons began. The previous four were no longer available: the first had suffered an ankle sprain that made him resemble a pretzel; the second showed a nosebleed worthy of a ritual sacrifice; the third had slipped so mysteriously he needed pelvic immobilisation and spiritual counselling; and the fourth had developed an incurable agoraphobia every time the hall doors opened.
My brother was only still standing because healing magic was his only argument for survival.
He straightened his clothes with slow gestures and, while pretending to dust himself off, let his gaze drift lingeringly down the movement of Eris's skirt.
"You know...," he whispered, approaching my chair with a smile that would make any magistrate sign a restraining order. "Despite the probability of a compound tibia fracture, the physical proximity this choreography demands offers tactile advantages I consider... encouraging."
I looked directly at his face, keeping my tone of voice at the driest register available.
"If you keep monitoring the movement of her frills with that depraved raccoon face, you perverted Chubby-Cheeks," I stated, "I'll make sure your next healing spell has to reconstruct your entire dental arch."
Rudeus took a step back, clearing his throat with a haste that nearly choked him. "I was merely assessing the tensile strength of the dress fabric!"
"I know exactly what kind of tension you'd like to test. Get back to your training mark before I decide to demonstrate the physics of a mechanical recoil."
He swallowed and retreated, adopting a posture of commendable prudence.
"One more attempt," Edna announced, her voice suggesting she was currently operating on the last reserves of her mental health.
The musicians started again, exchanging looks of pure resignation. Rudeus stepped forward. Eris crossed her arms with the rigidity of someone bracing to repel a barbarian invasion and accepted his hand with a muscular tension that announced disaster from a mile off.
I counted the beats mentally.
One. Two. Three.
She moved forward on the second beat with the delicacy of a siege ram trying to break down a gate. Rudeus tried to redirect the trajectory, she stamped on his foot hard enough to extract a wounded hound's yelp from him, and then, red with fury and frustration, she shoved him with both fists.
Rudeus hit the floor for the second time within the same ten minutes.
Eris, without offering a single apology, turned on her heel and ran towards the side exit.
Edna let out a sigh carrying the weight of weeks of pedagogical failure. The musicians lowered their heads in the synchrony of people thankful to have come out of a battle alive.
I stood up from my seat.
"I'll fetch her," I announced, without waiting for Edna's permission, aware the woman was one step away from bursting into tears.
〈Eos, target's coordinates.〉
[Vital signature located in the old hay barn, on the western edge of Philip's property. Recommend caution: the mana fluctuation suggests the specimen Eris is currently operating with the temperament of a cornered badger that's had too much caffeine.]
I walked unhurried along the path. I found her sitting on a damp bale of straw, knees pressed against her chest, head buried in them, trying to hide a shame she stubbornly disguised as anger.
I sat beside her, keeping a short distance. Our shoulders nearly touched, and the heat radiating off her was almost palpable in the barn's cold air.
We stayed in absolute silence for a few minutes.
Eris clearly expected a lecture. I could tell from the tension in her back; she must already have been building up every defence against the traditional etiquette arguments she imagined I'd use.
But I offered no judgement. The silence stretched until her patience, always a very short-lived resource, ran out completely.
"It's completely different!" she shouted, without lifting her face.
"Different from what?"
"From fighting!"
She lifted her head, and words began pouring out of her mouth with no filter or politeness. Eris explained that, when she fought with Ghislaine, she knew exactly where to move her body's structure. She knew when to advance and when to open up space. But in dancing, Edna's count was rigid, her partner tried to pull her by the hand with no criterion that made any practical sense, and she felt she was losing control of her own legs.
"I hate it when they try to force me to follow!" she fumed, ears red with irritation. "They should warn me before changing direction!"
"When you duel with Ghislaine," I remarked, keeping my tone as calm as possible, "does she send a letter warning you before delivering an attack?"
Eris frowned, her reasoning momentarily thrown off by the absurd analogy. "Of course not. That would be idiotic."
"Then how do you know exactly the moment to dodge?"
"I watch her movements."
"Do you only focus on her eyes?"
"No. I watch her whole body. The weight."
"There it is," I replied, turning my face to look at her. "Ghislaine's shoulders pull back a millimetre before a downward strike. Her hips shift her centre of gravity to give the cut firmness. Her left foot turns on the dry ground before she's even consciously decided the direction of the attack."
Eris kept her eyes fixed on mine, the anger gradually giving way to a lively curiosity. There was a different glint in her golden pupils as she listened to me translate the language of combat.
"But what you're describing is swordsmanship," she argued, with a stubborn pout.
"Swordsmanship and the waltz share the same fluid mechanics, Eris. Both are rhythm."
She opened her mouth to argue, but hesitated, genuinely considering the concept for the first time in her life. Her cheeks took on a pink tone that had nothing to do with her earlier indignation.
"When you're in the yard," I continued, "there are two rhythms happening at once. If you try to follow only your own, you'll crash into her defence. If you try only to mimic hers, you'll spend the whole time retreating until you're disarmed. You need to find the intersection between the two forces."
"You don't follow Ghislaine's rhythm," I added, reaching out to lightly touch her shoulder, feeling her muscles relax under the contact. "You respond to her movements."
"And is there a practical difference?"
"All the difference in the world. Your partner's lead isn't a military order you're obliged to carry out; it's just a physical proposal. He initiates a turn, you feel the weight of his hand changing and anticipate the movement before it's completed. He advances, and you open your own space to accommodate his weight. It's a dialogue between two bodies."
"So... it's like a sword fight?"
"Yes. But without needing to send your opponent to the infirmary."
Eris let out a short laugh, a genuine, lovely sound she immediately tried to muffle to keep up her untamed-girl pose.
"You don't need to learn to obey a lead, Eris," I said, letting my voice come out a little softer. "You just need to learn to listen to the other person's physical mechanics."
She stared at her own clasped hands, digesting the concept in a way I knew would translate into absurd motor ease down the line. She raised her reddened eyes to my face.
"So you're saying," she said, slowly, "that it's possible to think of dancing as combat without swords?"
"I'm saying the division between the two is a convenient lie invented by etiquette instructors who don't know how to wield a blade."
"Show me."
"In this stable?"
She looked around, assessing the straw, the curious horses, and the amount of dung that would hardly contribute to an artistic atmosphere.
"No," she admitted, with a resigned pout. "That would be inappropriate."
"A decision showing excellent good sense."
I stood up from the hay bale and held out my right hand towards her.
Eris stared at my palm for a few seconds, her red strands falling over her forehead as she made her decision. With a determined motion, she reached out and took my hand. Her skin was warm, marked by the calluses of daily sword training, but she squeezed my fingers with a firmness that communicated absolute trust in my lead.
I made no comment on the fact that she'd just declared war on the idea of being led, only to accept exactly that seconds later.
I simply led her back to the dance hall, keeping our hands joined the whole way through the manor's stone corridors.
When we opened the wooden doors, we found Edna gathering up the wreckage of her professional pride. Rudeus had already healed from the fall and was sitting in a side chair with the expression of someone estimating his chances of surviving the rest of that afternoon in single-digit percentages. The musicians were arguing quietly, in what I suspected involved the words "immediate collective resignation."
Eris walked into the hall without letting go of my hand.
"Lady Eris," Edna began, standing up hurriedly. "We need to have a serious conversation about your behav—"
"That discussion will take place another time," I interrupted, keeping my voice firm.
The tutor blinked, disarmed by the interruption. "Miss Azra'il?"
"I need to carry out a practical demonstration," I announced.
"A dance demonstration?"
"Of applied rhythm."
My left hand slid to the hilt of the wooden Jian I carried strapped to my waist. The blade slid out with a subtle sound. I spun it once between my fingers quickly before settling it in front of my body in a relaxed but perfectly balanced stance.
"Miss Azra'il...," Edna intervened, her brow furrowing instantly. "You intend to use a sword in the hall?"
"It's made of treated wood."
She stared at the sword, then at my face. "I'm not sure that technical detail is capable of reassuring me."
"It should. Fatality records in my demonstrations drop to an acceptable percentage when I use non-metal materials."
Rudeus pressed his closed fist to his mouth, making a heroic effort to hide his laughter.
I turned to the pair of musicians.
"Triple metre, three-four time," I instructed. "Start at a moderate tempo and then accelerate gradually."
The lutenist raised his right hand shyly. "And... which melody would you like us to play?"
"Whichever you prefer," I replied. "I'll take care of matching the execution."
The music began. I closed my eyelids for a brief second, absorbing the melody's structure before starting any physical movement on the floorboards.
In one of my past lives, I knew a cultivation sect that considered the division between warrior and artist a fundamental pedagogical flaw. The Celestial Harmony Pavilion, perched atop a floating mountain range, taught its disciples music theory before they'd even formed their energy core; they learned to dance before marching off to weapons training, ensuring the blade became a natural extension of the body's rhythm.
At the time, I found the method excessively theatrical. Centuries later, I was forced to admit it worked with an irritating efficiency.
I took the first step forward. The Jian followed the extension of my arm; I turned my wrist and the wooden blade traced a perfectly circular arc in the air. I slid my back foot, shifted my centre of gravity, and executed a full 360-degree turn, finishing the horizontal cut exactly on the first beat of the following bar.
One. Two. Three.
Step. Turn. Cut.
One. Two. Three.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Eris following the movement with her head. She was recognising the beat count, the same metric Edna had been trying to instil in her muscles for weeks through exhausting repetition, now translated into a physical language she was able to decipher immediately.
I sped up the tempo of the movement. The musicians, attentive to my posture, kept pace with the new execution speed with no timing wobble at all. The Jian spun around my waist; I switched hands on the grip, crouched low to the floor, and executed a full turn on one foot, keeping the wooden tip mere centimetres from the hall's polished oak, before rising again in an upward vector.
I channelled mana through the Jian's grain.
A thin, liquid ribbon of water sprouted along the Jian's edge. It didn't function as an attack, but as a visual marker of the physical movement in the air; every cut executed left an arc of water suspended in the air for a fraction of a second before scattering onto the floor, making it easier for Eris to follow the trajectories with her eyes.
Then, I changed the elemental flow signature to fire. The water trail evaporated into a subtle cloud of steam, replaced by a low-intensity flame that ran along the wood, drawing temporary luminous circles across the hall with every turn I performed.
Advance. Containing cut. Transitional spin. Precise thrust. Defensive retreat.
The entire sequence flowed in perfect sync with the score the musicians were now adjusting in real time, following my choreography with a professional instinct they'd probably had no idea they possessed until that afternoon.
Rudeus wore an expression of deep admiration at the chantless magical control. Edna seemed to be silently reconsidering the foundations of two decades of a career as an Asuran etiquette instructor. The musicians exchanged looks of pure astonishment, trying to understand how they were keeping up so naturally with bodily movements no prior rehearsal had established.
But Eris wasn't paying attention to the magical pyrotechnics or the visual spectacle of the flames.
She kept her eyes fixed exclusively on the movement of my feet.
"That transitional step...," she murmured audibly, oblivious to everyone else in the hall.
I continued the choreography, without breaking the flow to answer.
"You use that same weight shift when you dodge my attack to the left!" she exclaimed, taking a step forward.
A small, genuinely satisfied smile appeared on my lips.
"And that full heel turn!" she went on, her voice rising with the excitement of discovery. "You did that exact move to escape my lunge in our last practice fight in the yard!"
Understanding had finally settled in.
Everyone else in that hall saw only a brilliant, unusual artistic performance. But Eris was the only one able to see the language and practical use of combat operating underneath every beat of the dance.
The melody came to an end on a long chord. The last flame running along the Jian's wood died out, leaving only a faint column of smoke that dissipated into the dance hall's air.
Silence settled back over the room.
I lowered the training sword, adopting a stable resting posture.
Edna seemed to be mentally calculating whether her professional résumé would require a complete structural overhaul after that afternoon. Rudeus wore that typical expression of a brother who strongly suspected his twin sister kept even more outrageous secrets and abilities than the ones she revealed in everyday domestic life.
Eris simply walked towards me, stopping mere centimetres away.
"I want to learn!" she declared, firmly.
"I imagined that would be your conclusion," I replied.
"I want to start learning now!"
"I also assumed you wouldn't show the slightest patience to delay the process."
I spun the wooden Jian and slid it back into the holder strapped to my waist.
Eris protested immediately, her brow furrowing in displeasure. "You just said you'd teach me!"
"And I intend to honour that statement."
"Then why put the training sword away?"
"Because you need to learn to dance, Eris."
"BUT WHAT YOU JUST DID WAS A DANCE!"
"Indeed, it was an ancient dance, applied."
"THEN TEACH ME THAT SAME CHOREOGRAPHY WITH A SWORD!"
"Not at your current stage of learning," I replied, staying calm.
"AZRA'IL!"
"The sword wasn't what created the rhythm you just witnessed, Eris," I explained, in the hall's silence. "It only worked as a visual tool to make the music's cadence perceptible to your combat-focused mind."
I held out my right hand towards her again. Our eyes met, and I noticed her determination soften for an instant at my closeness.
"Now, try to find and listen to that same bodily cadence without needing a weapon in your hands."
She stared at my extended palm. She looked at my face for a brief second, took a deep breath and, finally, joined her fingers with mine. Her skin was warm and subtly damp, but she squeezed my fingers with a firmness that communicated absolute surrender to my lead.
I stepped closer, positioning my left hand on the curve of her waist with a firm, secure touch. I felt her breath catch for a fraction of a second and her body briefly stiffen before yielding to my touch. Eris rested her free hand on my left shoulder. Our hair created an almost visually poetic contrast under the afternoon light: her fire-coloured strands mixing subtly with my snow-white ones.
And there, in the middle of that oak hall that had witnessed the physical defeat of five dance partners and a considerable volume of accumulated pedagogical despair, Eris Boreas Greyrat's first real waltz began.
With no swords used, no need for magical pyrotechnics, and no authoritative command. There was only the continuous rhythm of the music that she, through my body, was finally beginning to listen to and respond to on her own.