Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Fifty Six: A Gathering

It was quite hard to keep an eye out for spies when one was having their arse handed to them at daily training sessions.

Jordan was learning that the hard way.

Yddris lunged at him again, a swirl of black cloth and speed, and Jordan only just brought his arm up in time to block a flying punch. He grunted as it landed. Yddris wasn't giving it his all, or he'd already be barely conscious, but the Unspoken wasn't going easy either. He seemed to be trying to make up for weeks of sparse training opportunities all in one go.

Worse, there was an audience for his drubbing.

He hadn't been able to convince Grace not to come, not once Yddris instructed Nova to watch them spar. At some point, Astra had drifted over to join them, and Jordan kept catching glimpses of Akiva in disguise, making every excuse to pass by on errands and pull stupid faces to put him off balance. Not that he needed any help with that.

He gritted his teeth and launched himself into the next round before his tutor had a chance to move, ducking low to avoid a swipe and aiming for the knees. His jab landed; he heard Yddris grunt as his knee buckled for a moment, but then Jordan fumbled his footing and allowed the Unspoken to get a solid grip around his neck from behind.

"Better," Yddris muttered. "Sneaky, but better."

"Try fighting a Varthian for any length of time and you soon get used to aiming at knees," Jordan growled, shoving an elbow back sharp and hard. Yddris dodged the jab but had to loosen his grip to do so, giving Jordan a chance to twist out of the headlock and skip back a few steps.

"Good." Yddris rolled his shoulders. "You're getting fast, boy."

"Varthians," Jordan muttered again, more to himself than anyone else. He'd thought not having lessons with Usk for a few months would give him a reprieve, but it appeared Yddris intended to maintain the intensity.

"Take five. Hold a flame."

"That isn't a break!"

"Hold it in a sphere."

Jordan scowled, but Yddris only pulled out his pipe and stuffed it. When glaring didn't get him anywhere, he dragged himself to the makeshift bench on the sidelines where his sister sat and conjured a ball of flame to sit between his palms. With some concentrated effort, he forced it to circle on itself, creating a hypnotically spiralling sphere. He would have been more impressed by it if it wasn't so tiring to maintain.

They were at the end of their second day of travel. It had been uneventful, for the most part, which Jordan didn't trust for one minute – but that didn't change the fact that he couldn't sense anything amiss. If he hadn't known better, he might have thought this was just a strange road trip; everyone seemed to be carefully sidestepping any talk of the real reason they were heading south and the atmosphere was in general quite cheerful. Try as he might, he couldn't detect any sign of who among their number might be working for Marick. He hadn't even spotted Silas yet, though a snatched word with Akiva had confirmed that he was around somewhere, just in very good disguise. Jordan couldn't argue with the need for it, but would have preferred to know where Silas was himself.

"I still can't quite believe you can do that," Grace muttered, breaking into his sulk. She was staring at the rotating sphere with her head slightly on one side. On her other side, Nova was also watching the fire, though she didn't look like she was really seeing it. Since her panic attack the previous day, she hadn't left Grace's side and had barely spoken.

"Mm," Jordan held the ball up, "if Yddris didn't have me doing it every five minutes, I might be more impressed myself. But he does."

"Can you do runes yet?"