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(11) Ande: A Rock and a Hard Place

I'm glad for more than a few reasons that Casin's been teaching me to fight properly with a dagger in each hand. I whirl around and parry the stone outcrop I've been striking for the better part of a sun's hand-length. The blows send hollow shocks into my hands that I flex my arms and bend my elbows to soften. I did this so much the first few days, I almost hurt my wrists before Ruka caught me and sent me back to Casin again. She banned me from fighting rocks until I knew how to do it properly. It was the best motivation I've had in days.

Fighting things has always been something I've enjoyed on some level. I never used to be an angry person, but there's always been something cathartic in the spinning, whirling motion of the island dance-fights I learned as part of my repertoire, even if I was rarely the one actually performing them. But I learned them, and took to them almost as quickly as my other dances, then began to do them on my own, just for fun. There was a dead tree back on Telu where I'd go to do exactly this, only it was a long stick in my hands instead of a pair of pointy things, and I never used a stabbing motion. In the island dance-fights, it wasn't allowed.

It's my primary advantage here. I unleash a flurry of sideways blows across the rock, then fall back, panting. I check both daggers. All the things I've struck with them have never so much as scratched them. It's been hard to adjust to it regardless; I keep worrying I'll chip their lethal tips, even though the older one is no duller than the new one, despite two hundred generations in the coral-block walls of Roshaska. I didn't use to care as much. But these have become a proxy for a lot of things I'm protecting and fighting for now.

The stone sits in front of me, silent and stony. I pounce on it again, dancing in a circle with tail-flicks that were clumsy when I started training, but have since smoothed. I've had to unlearn the muscle memory of moving in circles with two feet in order to master it with a tail, and it's been harder than it has any right to be. I rain down a hail of blows with the backs of my daggers this time, chipping a couple little pieces off the rock and stirring up a cloud of algae. Front, back, side, side. The motion comes almost smoothly now, not yet completely muscle memory, but at least synchronized enough that I no longer accidentally stab myself the way I did repeatedly in the first few days. I've been practicing obsessively since then.

Another pause. Another round. I rotate between sideways parries, dagger-handle blows, and a self-defense routine in the open water without the rock. There's a kind of savage pleasure in the muscle burn. I should probably stop soon. I've been going long enough today already. But there's one more routine I've been avoiding, and I can't really avoid it when it's the most important one of all.

I turn to the rock again, breathing heavily. My hands both tighten around the hilts of my daggers, no longer smooth beneath my hands. Casin whipped them both in some kind of rope-like fiber that I think she spun from sea-fans, but it's hard to know for sure. The sudden improvement of my grip on the otherwise smooth bone has doubled my striking power, and I terrify myself sometimes.

I won't be striking at full power this time; my hands are already raw from the day's practice, and I didn't quite let them recover after yesterday's. I'm supposed to be leaving a day between the sparring rounds against actual, physical objects, but with so little time between now and our departure for Rapal, it's hard to justify the rest breaks. I'll have plenty of time to let my hands recover during the actual trip to the Ashianti city. There are no rocks in the open ocean.

I'm stalling again.

I grip both daggers and dive for the rock again. My arms flow through combination motions now. Slash-strike. Strike-didge. Dodge-slash. And then, with a spin that isn't necessary but that I like for its parallel to dancing, a combination strike-strike-parry-dodge-stab. Both daggers sink almost a finger's length into the stone. I wrench them out again. A trail of stone-dust follows both their tips like miniature shooting stars. I repeat the sequence, coming from a different angle this time. There are combinations for single stabs, double stabs, and stabs combined with a different kind of blow from the other dagger. I still stumble on a couple, and repeat them until the basic flow I managed to achieve last training session returns to me. The frenetic energy of the sequences isn't just practice for the heat of an actual battle. The rock isn't a rock anymore.