An Exchange of Skill

Sirael kept her eyes on the practice staves.

Then she crossed the clearing.

Wet leaves barely moved beneath her boots. At the rack, she passed the Living Staff without touching it and tested two plain lengths of wood in her hands. She checked their balance, sighted along each shaft, and carried both back into the circle.

Rishi waited where Thiarel had left him.

Sirael stopped outside his reach and tossed him one staff.

It turned once in the air. Rishi caught it at the middle. No warmth answered his palm. No grain tightened around his grip. Only wood, weight, and another fighter standing before him.

He bowed.

Sirael set her staff’s end against the earth, laid the shaft along her forearm, and touched two fingers to brow and heart.

No anger. No apology.

Only readiness.

At the edge of the circle, Maeril drew a careful breath.

“Straight to the advanced lesson, then.”

Sirael lowered her staff.

“The same terms.”

“Yes.”

Rishi stepped forward.

They began slowly.

Sirael kept her tip low. She tested his ribs with a short thrust, withdrew, and changed her grip before he could answer. Rishi turned the wood aside and flicked his own staff toward her knee. She raised her heel, let the strike pass beneath it, and placed her foot down at a new angle.

Wood touched wood and separated.

They circled without crossing their feet. Sirael’s stance stayed narrower than his, her weight close to the balls of her feet. Her hands moved along the shaft whenever distance changed—wide for leverage, close for speed, never fixed long enough to become a promise.

The staff suited her differently from the bow. It gave her no hidden distance and no branch from which to choose the first shot. She used it the same way nevertheless: watching before she committed, spending no motion she did not need.

The tension left Rishi’s mouth.

Sirael’s eyes sharpened.

Her next strike came hard toward his shoulder.

Rishi caught it across his shaft. The impact jarred his bruised ribs. Before he could settle, she reversed her hands and drove the other end toward his hip.

He turned with the second blow and guided it past him.

Her balance followed.

Rishi stepped behind her forward ankle. His staff crossed both her forearms and pinned her weapon close to her body. One pull would take her shoulders backward; one push at the wrists would send her hips the other way.

He began the throw.

Her knees folded before his pressure arrived. She turned beneath his staff, carrying his pull around her instead of fighting it. Her hands shifted, and the far end of her weapon hooked behind his leading leg.

She planted one foot.

The hook lifted as her shoulders turned.

Rishi’s trapped weight followed the only open path. Both feet left the ground. He spread his arms as his back struck wet earth.

Air left him in one hard sound.

Grey sky filled his sight. His ribs locked around the next breath.

A thin breath returned. Then another.

Sirael stood above him with her staff grounded and her free hand extended.

Rishi took it.

She leaned back and brought him to his feet without flourish.

“Thank you,” he said when his lungs allowed it.

Sirael dipped her chin.

Maeril released the breath she had been holding.

“I will remember never to dispute the watch with you.”

Sirael’s mouth almost curved.

They reset.

Rishi shook the mud from one sleeve and changed his grip.

The staff no longer waited in simple lines. It slid through his hands in short arcs, one end hiding the next. His feet traced smaller curves through the leaves. Every turn of the shaft covered a step, a shoulder, or the beginning of another strike.

Sirael watched the ends first.

Then his hands.

Then his chest.

Rishi entered before she finished choosing.

One end struck her forearm and numbed it through the leather. The other checked her thigh. She caught his third blow, let it slide down her shaft, and snapped her own staff into his upper arm.

He stayed inside her reach.

Wood knocked against wood in quick, hard beats. His tip found her ribs. Her shaft struck the same shoulder Thiarel had driven into the mud. Pain ran down his arm. He changed hands rather than lose the line.

Sirael raised her guard a finger-width to protect her bruised side.

Rishi stepped beneath it.

The butt of his staff drove into the hollow below her ribs. He used no more force than the point required.

Sirael stopped.

Her breath caught. Her grip loosened. For one beat, she could not close her fingers around the shaft.

Then she forced her shoulder forward.

It struck his chest and drove him back. Before his feet could settle, her knee hit his abdomen.

Rishi folded around the blow.

The circle paled at its edges. He planted the staff to keep his knees from reaching the ground.

Sirael staggered away with one hand pressed beneath her ribs. They faced each other across two paces, both breathing through pain.

Maeril’s fingers closed over her own sleeves.

“A tie,” she said. “I am declaring it before either of you loses an organ.”

Neither objected.

The third exchange began without a bow.

They knew the reach now. They knew the first answer each body preferred.

Rishi feinted high. When Sirael lifted her staff, he let his own fall away and kicked low toward her calf.

She pulled the leg clear.

His open palm struck the muscle below her collarbone.

Sirael took the blow and caught his wrist against her shoulder.

Her fingers closed.

She turned beneath his arm before he could draw it back. The turn pulled his shoulder forward and forced his feet to follow. Rishi let himself move rather than lose the joint, but the choice carried him across her line.

Sirael’s staff swept behind her.

Its far end scraped leaves from the earth. Her planted foot became the centre of the turn. Hip, shoulder, and wood rose together.

Rishi saw the strike.

His wrist was still trapped. His weight was on the wrong foot. There was no clean way out.

Sirael checked the turn too late.

The staff’s butt struck the side of his head.

White filled his sight.

Then nothing.

Maeril heard wood meet bone.

Rishi’s staff fell first. His knees followed. He made no attempt to roll, brace, or protect his head. He folded into the mud and lay still.

“Rish!” she shouted.

Maeril was moving before his name finished leaving her.

Sirael dropped her weapon. She knelt on his other side, all the reserve gone from her face.

“I misjudged—”

“Help me first.” Maeril slid one hand beneath Rishi’s head. “Apologise when he can hear you.”

Her fingers found no blood, no give or ridge beneath the skin that should not have been there. She pressed her other palm to his chest.

His heart beat.

Maeril counted three strokes before she trusted it.

His breathing was shallow but clear. His eyelids did not answer when she spoke his name again.

Fear closed around her throat.

She forced air through it and spoke the few Druidic words she had learned for a body too far from itself.

Warmth gathered behind her breastbone. It passed down her arm and entered him beneath her palm. His chest rose more deeply. The tight slackness around his mouth eased.

“Come back,” she said. “Once was enough.”

Rishi’s brow drew tight.

“Support his shoulders,” Maeril told Sirael.

Sirael obeyed at once. She slid one arm behind his back but did not lift until Maeril nodded.

Rishi opened his eyes.

His pupils were wide. His gaze moved past Maeril to the branches, then found her face.

“Stay down.”

He tried to sit.

He sagged into their hands, swallowed once, and closed his eyes. Maeril waited until he could hold his head steady.

Between them, Maeril and Sirael brought him upright. Sirael braced his back. Maeril kept one hand at his jaw and turned his face toward the weak morning light.

“Look at me.”

His eyes tracked together. Slowly.

“How many fingers?”

“Two.”

“Good. Do not sound proud.”

He raised one hand to his temple and winced. His fingers came away clean.

Sirael’s breath shook behind him.

“I struck too hard. I meant to test you, not break you.”

Rishi turned his head toward her. His eyes took a moment to settle on her face.

“It was a beautiful strike.”

Sirael stared at him.

His voice was rough and slower than usual. “I had not seen the pattern.”

He rested his fingers briefly over the wrist that still supported him.

“I accept your apology. And the lesson.”

Sirael bowed her head. Her breathing steadied.

“He cannot yield when he is unconscious.” Maeril kept her hand against Rishi’s jaw.

Sirael looked at her.

“Yesterday you asked us to trust you. This is our first morning. I know you did not mean it. I need to know you can control your next strike.”

Sirael held Maeril’s gaze. “Next time, the strike stops short.”

Rishi drew a slow breath against Maeril’s arm.

“We all wanted one more exchange. I should have stopped.”

Maeril looked down at him. “Remember that when your head stops hurting.”

Sirael helped shift his weight into Maeril’s arms and rose.

Both practice staves lay in the mud. Sirael retrieved them, checked each length for a split, and wiped the worst of the dirt away before returning them to the rack.

At the edge of the clearing, she turned.

Her fingers touched brow and heart.

Rishi returned the salute from where he sat.

Then Sirael left between the trees, a little faster than she had entered.

Maeril waited until the leaves stopped moving behind her.

“Enough,” she said through her teeth. “No more blows to the head before breakfast.”

She stood and brought Rishi with her, one arm firm around his waist. His weight came heavily against her.

On the path to the lodge, he squinted against the pale light and placed each foot with care. Maeril kept him close on the uneven ground.

They had reached the slope before his stride stopped wandering.

“I can help with breakfast.”

“You can help by not falling into the fire.”

“I can cut—”

“An onion? You would take off a finger and call it a lesson in non-attachment.”

Rishi took a moment to consider this.

“That is not entirely wrong.”

“Precisely. Sit. Breathe. Do the warm-light-under-the-skin thing. I will make food.”

At the lodge, Maeril guided him through the drape and onto his sleeping platform. She set his back against the root-wall and checked his eyes once more.

“Stay here until the pot boils.”

Rishi closed his eyes.

“I will stay.”

She left him with the water jug within reach and carried the food outside to the small hearth.

Rishi let the room narrow to what he could hold.

The scrape of a basket. Water entering a pot. Maeril crushing herbs between her fingers.

He drew breath until it reached the bruise under his ribs, then released it without forcing depth. One palm settled against his side. The fingertips of his other hand found his jaw hinge and the pounding line above it. Warmth followed the pressure—not flame, not light, but breath given somewhere to go.

The pain answered in pieces. Thiarel’s shoulder in his sternum. Sirael’s knee in his abdomen. The staff at his temple. He listened to each place until the muscles around it stopped trying to fight what had already happened.

The pounding in his skull receded from a roar to a heavy knock.

He could think again.

Both sisters had stepped into the circle with him.

Outside, dried meat struck hot water. Juniper and fennel followed. The sweetness of berries softened the smell of smoke.

Rishi opened his eyes.

Through the parted drape, Maeril stood over the pot with her hair wild around her face. She stirred with one hand and kept looking back at him.

He lifted two fingers from his chest.

Her shoulders lowered.

Rishi closed his eyes again and rested while breakfast simmered.