Fourth position. The blade moved through the arc and his shoulder did the work his core should have been doing and the quarter-heartbeat gap opened between fourth and fifth guard the way it always opened, the way it had opened every morning for two years, and Torven completed the transition and recovered his centre and started the sequence again because starting again was the only answer he had for a question he couldn't name.
The yard was empty.
He'd known before he arrived. Fifth bell, Ironrise. Sunlight on the eastern wall, low-angled, the shadow of the parapet cutting a diagonal across the circuit floor that moved one hand-width per bell. He'd calibrated his footwork to that shadow for three years. She stood in the shadow at fifth bell. She stood in the shadow and watched and said nothing and the nothing she said was more instructive than anything the garrison trainers had offered in four years of formal sessions. The light said fifth bell. She was not in the shadow.
