Page 30 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“You’re trying to make a fool of me,” I gasped out.

“No. I’m trying to show you what you should be doing every day—or at least most days—to strengthen your body.”

I wiped the sweat from my drenched brow and started furiously pacing the yard, refusing to look at him. “You could perhaps be a little kinder to start off with.”

“You’ll only be here a week. We’ve much ground to cover in that time. I want you to return home with aching muscles and a basic regimen to continue practicing. And you can teach your sister too, once you’ve started improving.”

The thought of Gemma doing this alongside me, witnessing the extent of my disgrace, was too horrifying to contemplate. I pushed against the feeling as hard as I could, but I was too tired to think straight and muttered petulantly, “Why don’t we bring her out here now? You can teach us both at once and save me the trouble.”

“You’ll be a terrible student with her around. Being a captive of the Vilia made her stronger. She’d run circles around you, and you wouldn’t be able to focus.”

I couldn’t stand the matter-of-fact tone of his voice, as if he’d thought through all of this a hundred times and anticipated every single thing I could say.

I marched over to where he stood, putting our equipment away in a large wooden crate. I started to lunge at him, to shove him again, but then stopped, feeling foolish and childish, and lost my footing. He must have heard the imbalance in my footsteps; he turned around to catch me, one hand around each of my wrists, and when I tried to wrench myself free, he held fast. I twisted and fought, but still he had me trapped.

“If you found yourself in this situation during a fight,” he saidquietly, “how would you get free? How would you fight back?”

I hated him. I hated his godsdamned unruffled teacher’s voice, and even more than that I hated how he looked at me, so calm and patient, his eyes like a vivid summer sky.

Inspiration came to me in a flash, and in a fit of rage, I pivoted slightly, put all my weight on my left leg, and slammed my right knee up into his groin.

He did release me then, with a slight pained grunt, and collapsed a little against the crate. But when I turned on my heel to leave him, buzzing with triumph and fury, I heard him laugh out a quiet curse, and he didn’t sound angry. He sounded glad.

A strange feeling came over me then, a feeling like lightning on the horizon. A quiet burn in my belly. I fought a smile; I didn’twantto smile. What was there to smile about? One small victory didn’t make up for two hours of humiliation. Feeling hot and edgy with irritation, I hurried up to the house with no plan in mind except to put as much space between me and Ryder Bask as possible.

***

The next few days passed in a blur of activity.

Every day, from the afternoon until late in the evening, our four families met to discuss strategy, scattered around the house in small groups or all gathered around the grand dining table. We debated what other families we could trust with the information we had, which was of course a point of major contention and led to many long arguments. We discussed whether to involve the Upper Army, comprised of magic-wielding soldiers, or perhaps just the Lower Army, whose soldiers used only conventional weapons and no magic. What would be the political consequences of telling one and not the other? There were also the questions of what official petitions needed to be made at the capital and at the university for funding and personnel;how we could make them as discreetly as possible so the Royal Senate wouldn’t find us out and bring everything out in the open; and how to coordinate defensive and research efforts with the Order of the Rose.

Every night I went to bed with a raging headache, feeling stuffed to bursting with names and places and ifs and buts. My body was stiff and sore, and my nerves were utterly shot from hours of playing peacemaker between my father and Lord Alaster, the latter of whom seemed determined to provoke Father at every possible moment.

Worst of all, every morning I suffered through training with Ryder until it was time for luncheon. On the fifth morning of working with him, my patience finally snapped.

“Try again,” he told me, standing a few paces from me. “And try actually listening this time.”

“Iamlistening,” I snarled from behind my raised fists. “I’m just not good at this, and no amount of repetition will change that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said mildly. “Let’s try anyway. Two.”

I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes and punched the leather target marked with a faded number two. I imagined the two was in fact Ryder’s face, and my fist landed right where it was supposed to. I felt a small surge of satisfaction—that had been a good one, I thought—but Ryder didn’t seem impressed.

“Four,” he said.

Angrily, I hit another of the leather targets hanging from the stable rafters, this one bearing the number four.

“Three. One. Three. One. Two. Four. Four.”

I obeyed, or at least tried to, but punching the heavy leather bags was hard enough without also having to think about numbers and pivoting my body, for each target hung at a different height and a different distance from me. I had to shift, dart, duck, and stretch, and command my muscles to move as they’d never done before, and I couldn’t do any of this quickly enough. I kept forgetting where threewas and punching one instead, and four instead of two, and Ryder kept saying the numbers faster and faster, so fast it didn’t seem possible that anyone could move that quickly except for Father and Mara, and their sentinel power seemed to me in that moment like the worst kind of cheating.

I felt absurd, stumbling around in the midst of his soft-eyed horses, with Ryder’s critical blue gaze on every awkward lunge of my body. I wore one of my own dresses that day—it was true, he’d said, that I needed to feel comfortable fighting in my everyday garments—but the skirts kept getting in the way.

“Aren’t you a musician?” Ryder observed. “Farrin Ashbourne, the most talented savant on the continent? Fingers nimble as a squirrel, voice clear as starlight? Isn’t that what everyone says?” He raised one sardonic eyebrow. “I wouldn’t know, looking at you now. You have no rhythm whatsoever.”

I flushed hot with rage and whirled on him, raised my poor throbbing fist to hit him—but then his words truly registered, and I paused, inspiration coming to me in a soft bloom of clarity.

I turned away from him, back to the targets. “Start again,” I told him.

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