The practice blade spun out of Nicasia’s grip, whistled past Damario’s left ear, and embedded itself point-first into the rump of a pack mule. The mule, an elderly beast named Plums, gave a slow, offended bray and kicked a sack of dried figs into the dirt. “A bold opening,” Damario said, not twitching an inch. “Unorthodox. Psychological warfare against our own logistics.” “My palm was slick with righteous fervor,” Nicasia snapped, wiping grease against her leather breeches. The afternoon sun beat down on the limestone slopes of the Serrania de Ferro crags, turning the air into an oven of chalky dust and scorched scrub pine. “And the balance is crooked. It leans left. Like an unprincipled tax collector.” “The balance is perfect, Your Holiness. The iron is Toledo spring.” Damario picked up a second ash-wood waster and tossed it to her. She caught it awkwardly against her ribs, wincing. “Again. Low guard. Shift your heels. You are defending the righteous dawn, not haggling over turnip skins behind the harbor brothel.” “Turnip vendors fight dirtier than Caelean paladins, de Valoria. A turnip vendor will gouge your nostril with an iron scale hook while smiling about the harvest.” “Good to know. Now strike me.” Nicasia lunged. Or rather, she launched herself forward like a sack of turnips tossed from an oxcart. Her foot caught a shelf of shale. Her balance tumbled forward, arms flailing, the blunt wooden stick swinging in a pathetic arc that wouldn’t have bruised a ripe peach. Damario didn’t even draw his side. He stepped inside her reach, caught her wrists, and hooked his boot behind her ankle to keep her from face-planting into the scree. The momentum swung her directly against his chest. His tunic smelled of pine sap, stale smoke, and clean sweat. His chest under the quilted gambeson was an unyielding slab of oak. “Step one,” Damario murmured, close enough that his breath stirred the loose tendrils of hair near her temple. “Do not trip over the geological features of the province you intend to liberate.” “I was utilizing gravity,” she gasped, her face heating from something entirely unrelated to the mountain sun. “Gravity declined your petition.” His grip shifted. Instead of releasing her, he stepped behind her, pulling her right elbow up and pressing his chest flat against her shoulder blades. One calloused palm slid over her knuckles, repositioning her grip on the hilt, while his other arm circled her waist to anchor her pelvis square to the path. Every line of his body pressed flush against hers. The heat of him soaked through linen and wool. “Hips back,” he instructed, his voice dropping an octave, raspier now. His thumb stroked the curve of her wrist, nudging the tendon until her blade leveled. “You carry tension in your neck. Drop your shoulders, Nicasia.” Her blood surged behind her collarbones, hot and completely unholy. “If I drop my shoulders any lower, I’ll be sitting down.” “Then sit on the wind. Coil your thighs. Feel where my weight sits against yours?” “I am currently excruciatingly aware of where your weight sits, yes.” Damario cleared his throat, but his hold didn't loosen. If anything, his fingers tightened over hers, guiding the wooden sword in a slow, clean thrust through empty air. “The point follows your gaze. If you doubt, the iron wobbles. You have to believe the space in front of you already belongs to your blade.” “That sounds like nonsense Brother Silvanus wrote on a napkin.” “It is the difference between a clean kill and an open gut.” His chin dipped, brushing her ear. “I would prefer your gut remain closed.” She twisted her head, intending to offer a razor-sharp insult about his tactical prose, but found his mouth barely two inches from hers. His hazel eyes were stripped bare of their usual stoic posturing. The mocking smile had vanished, replaced by an intensity that made the dry highland air feel thick, almost suffocating. Neither of them moved. The wind rattled dry gorse bushes down the ridge. Plums chewed a thorny twig. “An inspiring posture for a prospective conqueror,” came a dry, creaking voice from the wagon shadow. Nicasia sprang back so fast she nearly tripped over the shale again. Damario stepped away smoothly, sheathing his training waster with crisp, rehearsed indifference, though a dusky flush crept up the collar of his shirt. Brother Silvanus shuffled out from beneath the canopy, holding an unrolled sheepskin map weighed down with two pebbles. The old man looked like a dried prune wrapped in burlap, but his milky pupils possessed an unnerving clarity. “The sword is a secondary tool, Commander,” Silvanus said mildly, scratching his sparse beard. “The heavens require proof before they grant the hosts of the Dawn their true general.” Nicasia rolled her eyes, shaking the lingering tingles from her hands. “If the heavens want proof, they can check the crater where that siege engine used to sit. Or ask the ashes of the Imperial vanguard.” “Flashes of temper do not unlock the throne, child,” Silvanus countered smoothly. He pointed a withered fingernail at a jagged charcoal mark on the sheepskin. “Three leagues northeast, perched in the throat of the Iron Cleft. The Sunstone of Caelus rests inside the Cistern of Saint Maelor. It is our next stop.” Damario stiffened. “The Cistern was sealed eighty years ago. It’s rigged with pressure pendulums and quick-silver traps. The floor is an execution yard.” “Only to the unworthy,” Silvanus said with a placid, terrifying smile. “The sacred verses are clear. The true vessel must walk the corridor of blades and retrieve the stone unharmed. Her holy aura will stay the scythes. If she cannot survive the threshold, the prophecy is void, and we are merely bandits waiting for Caelean pyres.” Nicasia stared at the old man, her grifter instincts screaming so loudly she felt nauseated. “Hold on. You want me to wander into an ancient murder basement to fetch a shiny rock? Because of a nursery rhyme?” “Because it is the proof our allies demand,” Silvanus replied. “Lord Corvo and the southern baronies will not pledge ten thousand spears to a rumor. They require the stone. And the stone only yields to the pure.” He bowed, entirely unbothered, and walked back toward the wagon, leaving the sheepskin flapping in the gust. “He’s insane,” Nicasia hissed, whirling on Damario. “He is an old, sun-baked lunatic who thinks I have invisible armor! I don’t have an aura, Damario! I have sweat, panic, and an aggressive disregard for authority! If a scythe swings at my neck, it’s going to cut my head off!” Damario didn’t answer right away. He walked over to the edge of the limestone ledge, looking down at the southern valleys where smoke plumes marked the slow, relentless advance of Maella’s inquisitorial squads. When he finally spoke, the commander’s armor was gone from his tone. “My sister could stop nosebleeds,” he said quietly. Nicasia stopped her pacing. “What?” “Lucia. She was seven.” Damario kept his back to her, watching the horizon. “She would press her thumb to a scrape, and the skin would knit. Nothing grand. No lightning. Just a quiet warmth. My father hid it. He paid off the parish priests, kept her indoors, lied until his teeth rotted.” He turned, his face pale under the tan, carved by a grief so raw it silenced her cynical tongue. “The inquisitors arrived on Midsummer Eve. They didn't just hang her, Nicasia. They burned the house with my parents locked in the larder, because harbor heresy is a contagion that requires fire. I survived because I was in the woods, hunting quail for dinner. I came back to a pile of slag and the smell of roast meat.” Nicasia’s throat tightened painfully. The biting remark died in her mouth. “The Empire claims only the Emperor's line carries divine favor,” Damario continued, his voice steadying, though his hands curled into white-knuckled fists. “Every common miracle is branded an abomination, hunted down, and snuffed out so their golden throne stays unique. For ten years, I thought God had abandoned us. That we were just cattle living under butcher kings.” He walked back to her, stopping so close she had to tilt her chin to hold his gaze. The naked yearning in his eyes terrified her far more than any blade. “Then I found you. When that lamp flared in the hideout... when you pulled the storm from the sky... I saw that they lied. The divine isn't imperial property. It belongs to the soil. To people like Lucia. To you.” He touched her jawline, his skin rough and surprisingly gentle. “I won’t let the traps kill you tomorrow. I’ll walk ahead of you. I’ll trigger every scythe with my own flesh if I have to. But you are going to hold that stone. And we are going to tear down their cathedrals.” He let go and turned to check the mule’s cinches, leaving her alone on the rock ledge. Nicasia stood frozen in the cold ridge draft, her cheek still burning where his skin had touched hers. She wasn't a saintess. She was a petty thief from the gutters who had accidentally inherited a cursed spark of lightning she couldn't control. He was ready to die for a holy illusion that didn't exist. And for the first time in her miserable, lying life, the thought of letting him die made her feel completely sick.

Lessons in Sword and Stone