Ursik
We set up in the clearing behind the second cabin because it's the most defensible open space I could find when I arrived, which means Aislin has already found it too. I know this because when I suggest it, she just turns and starts walking without asking where it is.
I file that.
Ressa had stayed at the first cabin, which I'd expected.
She'd said something quietly to Aislin before we left — something too low for me to catch — and Aislin had given her the short nod of someone who hasn't decided yet whether they're grateful.
Ressa had caught my eye over Aislin's shoulder and made a face that meant: try not to be an idiot about this.
Fair enough.
The clearing is good. Not too large — large enough that there's room to move, small enough that it stays comprehensible.
The frost is mostly off the ground here, which helps; I don't need her going down on bad footing before we've even started and deciding that's my fault.
The trees on the north side break the wind. The light is decent.
She stops at the edge of it and turns to face me.
She's changed her weight distribution already — I can see it, that subtle shift where the back heel drops half an inch and the hips square up.
She doesn't know she's done it. Someone's trained her before, or she's learned it from watching, or she's spent enough time bracing for impact that her body has worked it out on its own. Either way.
"Right," I say. "Show me what you've got."
Her eyes narrow. "I thought you were teaching me."
"I'm teaching you what you're missing. First I need to see what you've already got." I spread my hands. "Come at me."
"You're three times my size."
"More like four." I keep my voice level.
Not flat — level, which is different. Flat says I'm not interested, level says I'm listening.
I've been figuring out, in the two minutes it took to walk here, that this woman reads everything, and I need to be careful about what I let her read off me.
"I'm not going to do anything yet. I just want to see how you move. "
She looks at my hands. At my feet. She's doing what I'd do — reading where the weight is, checking the arms. Then she moves.
She's fast. Faster than I'd clocked from watching her at distance, and she's quiet with it — no telegraph, no shifting of the shoulders — and she goes for the wrist, which is exactly right.
Not the chest, not a swing, but the wrist, because the wrist is the point of mechanical control.
Get the wrist and you redirect the whole arm, and if you can redirect the arm you've changed the angle of the threat.
I let her take it.
She gets two fingers around my wrist — as much as she can manage, the span of her hand not quite reaching — and she yanks, stepping sideways and ducking under the arm in a motion that is half-remembered and half-instinct and would absolutely work on someone smaller than me, or someone who wasn't braced for it.
I don't move. I'm a wall. She comes to the end of the yank and the wrist doesn't go anywhere, and for just a second — just the edge of a second — I see the calculation in her eyes before the frustration moves in behind it.
"Good," I say.
She drops my wrist. "Don't patronize me."
"I'm not." I turn the wrist so she can see it, the two fingers still ghosted on the skin where she grabbed.
"You went for the right point. The grip's the problem — you haven't got the hand size to lock it, which means I can pull back through.
" I reach over, take her hand — slowly, so she sees it coming — and bring it up.
She goes rigid but she doesn't step back.
I give her credit for that. "You need to use the whole forearm.
Not just the fingers. Hook it here — " I tap the heel of her palm, " — and rotate your body into it instead of pulling away from it.
You're fighting my strength. Don't. Fight my angle. "
She looks at where I'm touching her hand, then at my face. "Again."
"Again."
She does it again. I feel the difference immediately — less in the grip, more in the rotation, her body swinging through the motion rather than stacking up against mine — and this time my arm shifts, just a fraction, just the ghost of a redirect.
"Better," I say, and I mean it, which is maybe what catches her out because the narrowing in her eyes changes quality. Stays suspicious but adds something.
"What's the point," she says, "when I can't actually move you."
"You're not trying to move me. You're trying to change what I can reach.
" I step back, give her the full clearing between us.
"Threat management. You can't win a straight contest against something my size.
What you can do is control where my hands are, create a gap, and then run.
" I pause. "Do you know how to break a hold? "
"Depends on the hold."
Honest answer. More accurate than most people give — most people say yes and then it turns out they mean they once saw someone do it, or they've thought about it in theory. Her depends has the sound of someone who has tested this.
"Show me." I reach out and close my hand around her upper arm — loosely, not a real grip, but the shape of one. "Break it."
She doesn't think about it. She brings her elbow down and inward, hard, and it's exactly right — sharp angle, committed, no hesitation — and the motion would have worked if I had the usual bone structure and the usual pain response in my elbow joint. As it is, I barely feel it.
She knows immediately that it hasn't worked. I see it in the jaw.
"Your instincts are good," I say. "The problem is you've been practicing on humans.
" I release her arm. "On someone my size, that motion needs to go further.
The joint doesn't torque the same way — you need to overextend it by about this much —" I demonstrate on my own arm, showing the angle, "— or you're just applying pressure I can absorb. "
She watches me demonstrate with the focus of someone memorising, not just observing. I notice she's filed everything I've said so far — I can tell because she hasn't repeated the same mistake twice, which is faster than almost anyone I've trained.
"Why are you teaching me to fight you?"
She says it bluntly. Not accusatory — no heat in it, just the flat question of someone who wants the motive named directly.
I scratch the back of my neck. The honest answer is: because you're spending all your energy being the thing that stands between everyone else and the dark, and someone should tell you how to actually do it instead of letting you burn yourself up on willpower alone.
But that's too much to put in her hands yet. So I give her the closest true thing instead.
"Because Stonevein's not dead." I drop my hand.
I'm not worried about them, but she is. I might as well give her a target.
"We hurt them. We hurt them hard. But they're not gone, and if they come, they're not sending humans.
" I look at her evenly. "You need to know how to fight what might actually show up. "
Something crosses her face — quick, gone fast — and then the usual line of her expression sets back in. She nods once. Moves her feet back into the stance.
"Go again," she says.
So we go again.
I don't go easy on her. It becomes clear, in the first fifteen minutes, that easy would actually be an insult — she has the instincts of someone who has been in genuine danger, not sparring-danger, and if I'm soft about it she'll clock it and the whole thing will collapse. She has no tolerance for being managed.
What she does have is speed, and it is spectacular. I catch myself, the third time she slips a grip she shouldn't have been able to slip, making a noise that might have come out of my mouth at a normal volume.
I bring it down. Fast.
She doesn't flinch — she's already gone past the point where she flinches at noise, or maybe she started past it — but she stops. Looks at me.
"You did that on purpose," she says.
"I can be loud," I say carefully. "I forget sometimes." Which is not entirely true, but the true version — I was surprised and I liked what I saw and I get loud when I get interested — is not something I need her processing right now. She's working. Don't interrupt the working.
She holds my gaze for a moment and then she moves again.
The anger in her is its own thing. It isn't wild — it's precise, which is almost more unsettling than if it had been wild.
Wild anger telegraphs. Hers is completely contained until the moment she moves, and then it's like every motion has something extra behind it, something under the mechanics.
She doesn't fight like she's sparring. She fights like she's been waiting to fight, like she's had the fight building in her chest for months and each drill is the only place it's going.
I've trained warriors who fought like that. Usually after a loss — the kind that gets personal, the kind that doesn't resolve. What she's got is older than four months.
We work on the forearm redirect until it starts to feel automatic in her movements, and then I move us to holds — how to position against a wall, how to create drop weight, how to use the limited mass she has by letting it fall instead of trying to push.
She picks it up cleanly. Argues with me once, about the drop angle, and turns out to be right, which I tell her.
She blinks. Then keeps going.
"You're surprised I said so," I say.
"Most people don't," she says, and that's all she says about it.
"If you're right, you're right." I reset the hold. "Do it again and this time trust the drop."
She does. The drop works. I actually have to shift my weight to compensate, and the shift opens up a gap she doesn't use because she hasn't been told to use it yet, but she sees it — I watch her eyes track it — and she turns back to me with the first thing she's shown all morning that isn't suspicion or controlled anger.
It's satisfaction. Narrow and private. Gone in a second. But there.
"The gap," I say.