POV: Cael
Cadets move like a crooked choir. Some of them will learn to sing in rain-stance. Some will drown on dry ground.
“Left foot,” I call. “Heel kisses the line. Again. Again—Tomas, if your elbow had a tongue, it would be licking the wind. Keep it close or lose it.”
They laugh. Good. Laughter carves fear into something workable.
Rhun paces inside me, claws clicking along my ribs. He wants to be elsewhere—on the bridge, in the market, wherever the smell of hibiscus and lemon-slick soap trails behind Mara like an argument I’m trying not to have.
Jax stands at the edge of the yard with a slate, pretending to mark formations. He’s marking me. He always has.
“Rotate,” I order. “Mud forms. Rain-stance, six-count.” Boots slap. Shoulders scrape. The chorus tightens, loosens, tightens again.
A kitchen runner weaves along the wall with a kettle and a basket of cups. I don’t have to turn to know it’s her. My body knows like a room knows which window is open.
Rhun rises. “Mate.”
No.
She doesn’t come onto the yard; she knows better. She stays at the edge and hands the kettle to the armorer, who pours into a lined cup and offers it to me as if it doesn’t matter who heated the water. It shouldn’t matter. It does.
“Hydrate,” Jax calls, because he’s benevolent and practical. “Your bones don’t like heroes.”
The cadets swarm the cups. I sip—too hot, not sweet—perfect. When I glance toward the runner again, she’s walking away, braid damp, dress black with a pink tie at the throat. A ribbon not for show but for closure.
Rhun presses his muzzle against my sternum. “Go.”
We do not go.
“Luca,” I say, and a spindly boy startles so hard his cup sloshes onto his boots. “Rain-stance with weight. Jax—sandbags.”
Jax hands out sandbags with a face like a saint tolerating sinners. When he reaches me again, he stands just inside my periphery and pretends to watch a gull gull.
“She saved a child at the gap,” he says mildly, as if discussing weather.
“I saw,” I say.
“She didn’t grandstand it.”
“She doesn’t grandstand anything,” I answer, and immediately regret the familiarity of the claim.
Jax is too disciplined to grin. “You’re rerouting a whole city around one person, Cael.”
“I’m rerouting predictables. That’s called command.”
He uptilts his chin toward the lower bridge. “Predictable: she’ll be at market on rotation. Predictable: accidents happen where pressure builds. Predictable: you will not be able to stand at every span.”
Rhun bares teeth. “I can.”
“You can’t,” I tell him and Jax at once. “So we shift the path that invites accidents.”
Jax’s silence is the sound of him not disagreeing. “Write the memo,” he says finally. “I’ll witness it.”
We run the cadets through rain-stance until their shoulders burn and their legs shake and they remember that shaking isn’t failure; collapsing is. When the bell rings, we dismiss them by rows. Mud sucks at their boots as they shuffle off like an exhausted shoal.
Good for them. Lysanth doesn't keep weaklings. Power and duty comes first.
Only then do I pull the slate from Jax’s hand. I write: Hearthworks delivery routes to avoid training yard perimeter and lower span mid-gap until repair. Mara Ilyas assigned to interior corridors when possible. Replace with rotating team—Pia, Tor, Devon. I sign my name, date, time. I fit the slate into the pouch for administrative memos.
Jax watches, impassive. “Self-protection?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Whose?”
“Everyone’s,” I answer, and it’s true enough to pass a court oath.
He tilts his head. “You can’t unfight a tide, Cael. You can only build better walls.”
Rhun snorts inside me. “Walls fail. Anchors hold.”
I don’t ask him what he thinks an anchor looks like.
We leave the yard. The market noise rides the wind to meet us—barkers, bells, skitter of children, clatter of cups, the upheld hum of a city pretending it isn’t a fortress first and a home second.
At the corridor bend, the kettle runner reappears with the empty basket tucked under one arm. She halts as we nearly collide, then draws back just enough to be polite without apologizing for existing. Smart.
“Runner,” Jax says, neutral. “Thank you.”
She nods once, eyes flickering to the bandage at my thumb where a cadet sliced me in parry drills. “That will scar,” she says, voice steady.
“So will you,” I say before my brain can intervene.
Her gaze flicks up, surprised, then away. “I intend to choose how,” she answers, and continues down the hall.
Rhun laughs, delighted, feral. “She will not bow.”
Jax exhales through his nose. “You’re moving routes because you can’t move your eyes.”
“I’m moving routes because I can see where they lead,” I say.
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t have to. He’s already seen the memo.