"Everything is, lately." She stopped a few feet from him and looked at the post, which was scarred and splintered from years of such attention. "Will ye teach me something?"
He turned then, looking at her through the gloom. His eyes were dark, searching hers for a flicker of hesitation.
"Nae tae fight," she added, her voice a steady anchor in the quiet. "I ken I cannae learn tae fight in a day. But something useful, if it comes tae it."
He was quiet for a long moment, reading her face with the focused, unblinking attention he gave things he was taking seriously. He didn't offer a dismissive smile or a patronizing word. Instead, he set down the practice sword and crossed to the weapons rack at the yard's edge.
He returned with a dagger. It was short-bladed, cross-hilted, and balanced for a smaller hand. A lethal, shimmering piece of steel that caught the dying light.
He held it out to her.
She took it. The weight of it surprised her. It was a heavy, cold reality in her hand, the grip feeling strange and too wide across her palm. It felt like a living thing that didn't belong to her yet.
"Ye're holding it like it might bite ye," he said, stepping into her space.
"It might."
"Nae if ye're the one holding it." He moved behind her.
The heat of his body was sudden and absolute, shielding her from the wind.
"Adjust yer grip. Thumb along the spine of the handle, nae wrapped around it, ye lose control when the thumb wraps."
He reached around and repositioned her fingers without taking the blade from her. His hand was large, calloused, and warm over hers. He adjusted each finger with a surgical precision that suggested he'd done this a thousand times. "There. Feel the difference?"
She did. The blade suddenly felt less like a foreign object and more like an extension of her own hand. "Aye."
"Good. Now, the most useful strike ye can make with something this length is upward, beneath the ribcage."
He moved her arm slowly, demonstrating the arc. Not a downward blow, not a straight thrust, but a sharp, vicious upward motion aimed at the space between the lowest ribs. "Short range. Means ye have tae be close, which ye willnae like. But it requires less strength than anything else and it ends an encounter immediately."
"Ends it," she repeated.
"Aye." There was no softening in his voice, no lie to protect her from the reality of the steel. She appreciated that; it felt like a shared truth. "Again."
He guided her through it three times. Slowly, the motion broken into its components.
He stayed close at her back, his hand at her wrist and his arm alongside hers to show the angle. She could smell the woodsmoke and salt on his clothes, feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against her shoulder. The closeness registered. She was aware of it the way she was aware of the stone under her feet, clearly and without the alarm that had been her constant companion for eight years. The dagger required focus.
"Ye're leaning back," he said.
"Am I?"
"Aye. Instinct. When something threatening happens, the body wants to go backward." His hand settled briefly at her hip, a firm, heavy weight that adjusted her stance, and then left. "Ye have tae go forward instead. Intae the danger. The lean-back costs ye the force."
"That's counterintuitive."
"Most things that keep ye alive are." He moved her through the motion again. "Forward. Drive from the back foot."
She tried it. The motion felt different, committed and heavy in a way the previous attempts hadn't been. It was the weight of her body behind the steel rather than her mind retreating from it.
"Better," he said. And then, with that dry, razor-edged humor: "Considerably less like ye're trying tae hand the dagger back. Try again."
She tried again. And again. He corrected her grip twice more, her elbow once, and the angle of the blade when she began to think she had it perfect.
He was patient in the way he was with his men. Not indulgent, but consistent and specific. There was no sense of a man who had better things to do. For those minutes in the yard, the only thing that existed was her hand and the blade.
Somewhere around the seventh repetition, the motion stopped requiring thought. Her arm simply knew it. The weight of the dagger had become familiar, a known weight that balanced against her own.