Novel Full Chapter 190: Training
Chapter 190: Training
"Us?"
Bryan looked at him.
Rohan realised he had noticed the word too.
For several seconds, Bryan did not speak. Then he sighed through his nose and closed the ledger.
"You are still not shipblood. Some people will never stop caring about that. But you are no longer merely a stranger. You have eaten our food, bled outside our walls, saved people whose names are written in our ledger, and complained in every district of Veyrhold like a man determined to become part of the background noise."
Rohan blinked.
"That was strangely moving until the end."
"It was accurate until the end."
"Do you mean that?"
Bryan looked away first.
"I mean that if you leave, some people will be glad. Some will be afraid of what follows you. Some will miss you and pretend they do not. Veyrhold is complicated."
Rohan swallowed.
"Yes. I have noticed."
Bryan pushed the ledger toward him again.
"Learn these values before you leave. If you find something in the field and do not know what it is worth, you may risk your life for scrap or walk past freedom."
Rohan pulled the ledger closer.
"Those are both horrible options."
"Then study."
So he studied.
By the end of the second day, his head hurt more than his arm.
The third day belonged to Liora.
She found him at the outer practice yard just after dawn, where he had been working through spear forms alone. The sky above Veyrhold was bruised violet, the silver streaks faint behind layers of drifting cloud. The yard was empty except for a few training posts, a rack of practice weapons, and a row of dark stone weights used by shield hands.
Rohan had chosen the yard because no one was supposed to be there yet.
Liora, apparently, disagreed.
"You still drop your left shoulder when you expect a strike from below," she said from the gate.
Rohan lowered his spear and turned. "Good morning to you as well."
"It is a good morning. You are making obvious mistakes where I can see them."
"You were injured for months and somehow used that time to become more annoying."
"I used that time to watch you fight. That is different."
She walked into the yard with her hooked blade at her hip and a short spear in one hand. Her leg brace clicked softly with each step. She moved better now, though not perfectly. On good days, the limp was barely there. On bad days, she pretended it was barely there.
Rohan had learned not to comment unless she was about to make it worse.
Today, she looked determined enough that commenting would be dangerous.
"You are training?" he asked.
"I am making sure you do not embarrass us on the expedition."
"That is very generous."
"It is also necessary. You have improved, but you still fight like someone who learned most of his caution by almost dying."
"That is exactly how I learned it."
"I know. That is why I worry."
The honesty in her voice softened the words.
Rohan rested the butt of Hestia’s spear against the ground. "You worry about me?"
Liora looked briefly annoyed, as if the question itself had ambushed her.
"Yes, Rohan. I worry about the person who saved my life, lives in the same settlement, goes hunting with me, and has a habit of putting his injured arm into monsters’ mouths as a strategy."
"In my defence, it worked more than once."
"That is not a defence. That is evidence."
He smiled despite himself.
She did not.
After a moment, Rohan’s smile faded.
"Are you worried about the expedition?"
Liora looked toward the eastern wall. From this angle, the silver lenses along the battlements caught the weak morning light, each one like a pale eye watching the ash beyond.
"Yes," she said. "I have been east before, but not this far. My mother used to go on resource expeditions when I was young. She came back from most of them."
Rohan heard the missing piece.
Most.
"I am sorry."
Liora nodded once, accepting it without looking at him.
"She died in the furnace salt flats. The official record says ash collapse, but my father always believed the team was driven off-route by something larger. They found three bodies. Hers was not one of them."
Rohan’s grip tightened around the spear.
Liora continued before he could speak.
"I do not tell you this because I want comfort. I have had years to become tired of comfort. I tell you because the eastern route is not just danger on a map. People here know exactly which places took someone from them. When Maerin says the wreck field is unstable, it is because she has seen what it does. When Bryan counts every tube of storm-silver twice, it is because someone died carrying the last one. When I say you should stop dropping your shoulder, it is because I would prefer not to watch a stormling open your ribs."
Rohan listened without interrupting.
He had asked for more answers, more knowledge, more routes. He had sometimes forgotten that every piece of knowledge in Veyrhold had been paid for by someone.
"I understand," he said.
Liora studied him.
"I think you are beginning to. That is not the same thing, but it matters."
She lifted the short spear.
"Again. This time, I strike low. Do not guess. Watch my hips, not the blade."
They trained for two hours.
Liora was a patient teacher when she wanted to be, though her patience had edges. She corrected him fully now, not with cryptic comments but with explanations that revealed just how much attention she had been paying.
"You overcommit when you think the enemy is slower than you," she said after sweeping his spear aside and tapping his ribs with the dull end of hers. "That is fine against a wounded cinderback, but terrible against anything that changes direction quickly. You trust the first opening too much."
"I thought taking openings was the point."
"Taking real openings is the point. Cael Athis has many things that pretend to be vulnerable because something worse is waiting underneath. Skarn do it. Glassmaws do it. Some people do it."