In Kuroinu

When I woke up the cot was empty and the room was cold and there was a dent in the pillow where her head had been. Her bag was gone. Her sword was gone. The candle had burned out sometime in the night and morning light was coming through the narrow window in a band that crossed the floor and hit the far wall.

My arm was sore where she'd punched it. The scratch marks on my chest stung when I pulled the shirt on. Both of those were real.

I got up. Got dressed. The linen shirt smelled like her hair and I left it on anyway. My hands felt different when I tied my boots, the laces easier to grip, my fingers more precise than they'd been the day before. I flexed my right hand. Closed it. Opened it. The tendons moved with a sureness that hadn't been there yesterday.

Went to the training yard.

The whole party was already there. Llusse was on the wall cleaning her bow. Tianne was on her usual spot with her book. Mila was sitting on the ground near the weapon rack with a basket of bread and cheese she must have brought from the inn. Her tail was going at a steady background wag.

And Filia was sparring with a training dummy.

I stopped at the edge of the yard and watched. She was wearing her combat outfit, hair pulled back, and she was running through a drill I'd seen her do every morning since I arrived. The same sequence of strikes and footwork she used to warm up.

It looked different.

Her sword was faster. The cuts were cleaner, each one landing with a precision that hadn't been there a week ago. She pivoted into a low sweep and the practice blade took the dummy's arm off at the joint, and the wood splintered and the arm flew across the yard and landed in the dirt near Llusse's feet.

Llusse looked at the arm. Looked at the dummy. Looked at Filia.

Tianne had stopped turning pages.

"Your swordsmanship improved overnight," Tianne said. Her voice was measured, clinical. "Your speed, your follow-through, your edge alignment. All of it."

"That's impossible," Llusse said. She hadn't moved from the wall. Her arms were still crossed. Her bow was on her knees. "Nobody improves like that in one night. That's weeks of progress."

Filia racked the practice blade. Her neck was going red above her armor collar, spreading up toward her jaw. She stood very straight and looked at the broken dummy arm on the ground.

"The Hero's power," she said. "It works."

The yard went quiet. A breeze came through and pushed Tianne's hair across her face and she didn't brush it away. One of the goats in the pen on the far side of the yard bleated. Nobody looked at it.

Llusse's eyes moved. From Filia to me. From me to Filia. Back to me. Her elf ears were going red and the color was spreading from the tips downward.

"You," she said. "Last night. The two of you."

"That's enough, Llusse," Filia said.

"You slept with him. You actually-"

"I said that's enough."

"You went to his room and you-"

"LLUSSE."

Llusse's mouth shut. Her ears were scarlet. Her hands were gripping her bow so tight the wood was creaking. She stared at me and the color kept climbing in her face and then she looked away, hard.

"Fine," she said. Her voice was clipped and tight. "It's your decision. As leader."

"It was."

"And it's none of my business."

"Correct."

"I don't care."

"Good."

Llusse stood up from the wall and walked to the far end of the yard and started shooting arrows into targets with a speed and force that suggested each target had personally offended her. Her ears stayed red the entire time. She emptied half her quiver in the time it would have taken me to draw one arrow, and every shaft hit center-mass or better.

Tianne had been quiet through all of it. She was looking at me. Her eyes moved from my face down to my hands and stayed there, and I didn't know what she was looking at until I realized I was gripping the waterskin at my hip and my knuckles were sharper than they'd been yesterday. The tendons in my forearms stood out differently. Subtle. You'd have to be watching closely and you'd have to have been watching before to compare.

Tianne had been watching before. She'd held my wrist twice for healing, had pressed her thumb against the vein. She knew what my hands looked like.

She looked back up at my face and her brown eyes were wide and dark and she opened her mouth and closed it and then looked down at her book and didn't say anything for a long time.

Mila was sitting cross-legged near the bread basket, looking from Llusse at the targets to Filia at the dummy to Tianne at her book to me standing at the edge of the yard. Her ears were swiveling independently, tracking each person. Her tail had slowed to a confused pace.

"So," she said. "The hero's power is activated through..."

"Mila," I said.

"I'm just asking! It seems like important party information-"

"Mila."

"Got it!" Her tail resumed wagging. "Not asking. Understood. Don't need details." She picked up a piece of bread and took a bite and her ears twitched and she looked at me and the tail sped up and she looked away quickly.

I walked to the weapon rack and picked up a practice sword. It felt different in my hand. The weight was the same but my grip was surer, my fingers wrapping the hilt with a confidence that hadn't been there a week ago.

I swung. The blade went where I told it to go. I swung again. Same result. A week ago this sword had pulled me off balance on every stroke and now it was doing what I asked.

"Huh," I said.

Filia was watching. She'd been watching since I picked up the sword. She walked over and stood across from me, practice blade in hand.

"Ready?"

I nodded. She swung. I blocked it. The impact rang up my arm and I held. She swung again, faster, and I caught it on the flat of my blade and redirected. She followed with a low sweep and I stepped over it. Badly, my foot caught the edge and I stumbled, but I recovered without falling and got my guard up before her next strike landed.

My footwork was still bad. My form was still wrong. But my reflexes were a beat faster and my grip didn't slip and when she put force behind a strike I held my ground instead of stumbling backward.

She stepped back. Looked at me.

"You're better," she said.

"Yeah."

"Your reflexes. Your grip." She was cataloging changes with professional interest. "The power goes both ways."

"Mutual benefit," I said.

Her mouth pulled at the corner. "That's what you said."

"That's what it is."

From the far end of the yard, an arrow punched through the dead center of a target with enough force to embed itself to the fletching. Llusse pulled another from her quiver without looking at us.

I trained with Filia for an hour. She corrected my stance the same way she always did, but her hand on my hip lingered a half-second longer than before, and when she stepped behind me to adjust my shoulders she stood closer than she needed to. Her hair smelled clean. The same smell from last night.

We ran drills. She called out combinations and I executed them, or tried to. My blocks were cleaner. My transitions between strikes were less of a stumbling mess. I was still bad, still clearly a man who'd picked up a sword for the first time a week ago, but the gap between my brain and my body had narrowed. I could think "block high" and my arms would get there before the strike landed, and that alone was worth everything.

At one point I blocked a swing that would have knocked me flat the day before. I caught it clean, redirected it, and pivoted. My arms absorbed the shock and I didn't stagger.

Filia stared at me. Then she smiled. A full smile. Her eyes crinkled and her mouth relaxed.

"Better," she said.

I grinned. "Better."

After training, Mila brought food. She'd set up a spread on the stone wall, bread and cheese and sliced fruit and a pot of tea, and she hovered while everyone ate, her tail going at a nervous pace.

She'd brought a fifth cup. Nobody commented on it, but she'd counted herself in.

Tianne ate slowly. She was sitting close enough that her knee almost touched mine on the wall, and when I reached past her for the bread our forearms brushed and she pulled hers away and looked at the ground. Her breathing changed for a second. Then she went back to eating.

Llusse ate standing up, ten feet away from the group, facing the tree line. Her ears were a normal color again. She hadn't spoken to me directly since the yard.

"Llusse," I called. "There's fruit."

"I'm not hungry."

"You've been shooting targets for an hour. You're hungry."

"I said I'm-" She stopped. Her jaw worked. Then she walked over, grabbed a handful of the sliced fruit, and walked back to her position without looking at me. Her ears went pink on the way back.

"You're welcome," I said.

"I didn't say thank you."

"I know."

She ate the fruit facing the trees. After a minute she came back and grabbed another handful. Still didn't look at me. This time she sat on the wall, though. Ten feet away, but on the wall. Mila scooted the bread basket toward her without saying anything and Llusse took a piece and tore it in half and ate one half and put the other half on the wall next to her.

Mila was watching all of this with wide eyes. Her tail hadn't stopped since the food came out. When she caught me looking at her she busied herself rearranging the cheese on the cloth she'd laid out, ears flat with focus.

The sun was getting higher and the morning was warming up and I ate bread and cheese on a stone wall in a fantasy world with four women who were all processing the fact that I'd had sex with their leader last night and it had made both of us measurably stronger.

Filia caught my eye across the wall. Her chin dipped half an inch. A nod. A small one. Last night was behind us and the mission was ahead. She had cheese on her thumb and she wiped it on her knee and picked up another piece.

Llusse's ears were still pink.