Chapter 279: Watch Your Feet
The conditioning office had given Jin a name, a time, and instructions to wear something he could fall over in.
Instructor Sabel was waiting when he arrived at seven. She looked about fifty, with tightly bound hair and a padded training stave tucked under one arm. Her eyes went from Jin to Glitch, then to the empty space at the far end of the hall.
"He stays there."
Jin glanced at his beast. "He isn’t going to interfere."
"Good. Tell him before I hit you."
Glitch raised his head.
"It’s training," Jin said quickly, laying a hand against his shoulder. "You watch. That’s all."
The instruction received a doubtful response through the bond, but Glitch went where Jin pointed and settled on his belly.
Sabel had Jin move through the academy conditioning forms first. She watched his turns, made him repeat two of them, and tested his balance with a firm push to the shoulder.
"You have the strength for this," she said. "More reinforcement than I’d expect at your stage."
"The bond helps."
"I can see that. Now show me what you do when somebody wants to hit you."
She lifted the stave and thrust toward his chest.
Jin stepped back. The tip passed short of his shirt.
Sabel followed. He retreated again, pleased with himself for about two seconds, until she kept coming and he found himself looking past her shoulder at the stretch of floor he had abandoned.
"Stop," she said. "Check behind you."
The wall was close enough to touch.
"Oh."
"Yes. Oh." Sabel lowered the stave. "You gave me the whole line. I barely had to change direction."
Jin rubbed the back of his neck. From the far end of the hall, Glitch watched with uncomfortable attention.
"I did that against Talren."
"On your first retreat," Sabel said. "You recovered later. Your speed helped, and keeping your beast on the skink was a good decision. But Talren nearly caught you before either mattered."
Jin remembered the cloudy edge of the ice sword cutting across his escape. It had looked much closer from inside the arena than it did in the recording.
"Again," he said.
Sabel showed him a short diagonal step that took him outside the direct thrust without crossing his feet.
"Don’t reach," she said, tapping his leading foot. "You need to move again afterward."
His first attempt left too much weight on that foot. A light push from the stave made him stumble.
The next was better. By the fourth, he could let the tip pass his chest and turn without fighting his own balance.
"Now give your beast a command."
"While I—"
The stave caught his ribs.
"While you move," Sabel confirmed.
Jin glanced toward Glitch, who had lifted his chest from the floor.
"Stay."
"Good command," the instructor said. "Late, though."
The irritating part was how easy it looked when she demonstrated. One step, a turn, a word. Jin understood every piece. Putting them together made him stop walking as soon as he opened his mouth.
On the third try, he spoke and forgot the stave entirely.
On the fifth, he dodged successfully and pointed at Glitch without saying anything.
Sabel waited while he caught his breath.
"Shorten the command," she told him. "You don’t need to describe the whole maneuver. He knows your signals. Give him the part he needs."
They practiced with a single word. Hold. Back. Left.
Glitch remained in place for the hold command and followed the others only when Sabel gave him room to do so. Each time Jin turned his head for too long, the padded tip found him.
I’m going to hear this thing hitting me in my sleep.
By the end of the hour, he managed the step and command more often than he failed. Then Sabel changed the attack, and the first follow-up caught him squarely in the side.
"That," she said, "is why learning one movement isn’t learning to fight."
"I was starting to enjoy it."
"I noticed. Same time tomorrow."
She dismissed him with instructions to rest before his next session. Jin collected Glitch, whose disapproval had survived the entire lesson.
"She was supposed to hit me," he explained on the way out.
Glitch nudged the sore place under his arm, very carefully.
Jin sighed and scratched behind his horns. "All right. I wish she’d missed a few more."
Flicker’s afternoon practice was considerably more pleasant to watch.
Verrick had marked four perches in the enclosed yard, with the furthest about nine meters from the first. Three flights, then a rest. Flicker had begun objecting to the rests, which still made Jin happy even when she expressed the objection directly into his ear.
"Perch two," he told her, holding out his hand beside the first marker.
She hopped onto his fingers, leaned forward, and flew.
The flight itself was steady. The landing was not. She arrived too quickly, caught the perch with one foot, and flapped hard enough to spin halfway around it before securing the other.
Jin had already risen from the step. He sat down again when she settled.
"You scared me."
Flicker shook herself and looked away.
On the next flight she overshot again, although this time she recovered without hanging underneath the perch. Jin made her rest after the third, offered water, and waited until her breathing had settled before allowing another try.
"Slow down before you get there," he said. "Not after."
She couldn’t understand the whole explanation, but she watched his hand lower near the landing marker. On the next approach, her wings opened wider earlier.
Both feet landed together.
Jin grinned. "There you go."
Flicker looked at him, then at Glitch, checking her audience. He praised her again because he knew perfectly well what she wanted.
Glitch lay along the wall with one foreleg extended. Flicker no longer needed him stationed underneath every uncertain flight, but he still offered the familiar perch. She ignored it until the end of practice, then flew over and landed behind his elbow.
His tail moved once across the dirt.
Jin stayed on the step while she tucked her feet against the warm plating. For months, he had watched her for signs that something was going wrong. He still checked her breathing automatically.
It was even. She was simply tired from an afternoon of being a bird.
He leaned back on his hands and let them rest.
The next two days gave him sore ribs, better angles, and a growing appreciation for how much Sabel could do while barely moving her feet.
On the third morning, he stepped outside a thrust, gave Glitch a clear hold command, and moved again without prompting.
The follow-up still hit him.
"Better," Sabel said as he steadied himself.
This time, Jin believed her. He had seen it coming. He just hadn’t quite known what to do about it.
Flicker’s landings improved too. Verrick called them acceptable for a young bird, and Jin repeated that assessment to her twice on the walk back. Flicker seemed to consider it overdue.
In the evenings, he worked through opposing beast recordings and returned to the Engine. The lower quarry routes were reliable now. Beyond them lay a junction where two patrols arrived close enough together to ruin every straightforward approach he could think of.
He had mapped both passages. He knew what was in each patrol.
That night, with Glitch asleep and Flicker settled nearby, Jin opened the route again and moved his thumb toward the controls.
He was getting better at doing two things at once. It was time to see whether that helped.