Adolin nodded thoughtfully. He approached and reached toward her with a thumb and two fingers. She thought he was going to adjust her grip, but instead he pressed his fingers against her collarbone and shoved lightly.
Radiant stumbled backward, almost tripping.
“A stance,” Adolin said, “is about more than just looking great on the battlefield. It’s about footing, center of balance, and control of the fight.”
“Noted. So how do I make it better?”
“I’m trying to decide. Everyone I’ve worked with before had been using a sword since their youth. I’m wondering how Zahel would have changed my training if I’d never even picked up a weapon.”
“From what I’ve heard of him,” Radiant said, “It will depend on whether there are any convenient rooftops nearby to jump off.”
“That’s how he trained with Plate,” Adolin said. “This is Blade. Should I teach you dueling? Or should I teach you how to fight in an army?”
“I shall settle,” Radiant said, “for knowing how to avoid cutting off any of my own appendages, Brightlord Kholin.”
“Brightlord Kholin?”
Too formal. Right. That was how Radiant would act, of course—but she could allow herself some familiarity. Jasnah had done that.
“I was merely,” Radiant said, “attempting to show the respect due a master from his humble pupil.”
Adolin chuckled. “Please. We don’t need that. But here, let’s see what we can do about that stance.…”
Over the next hour, Adolin positioned her hands, her feet, and her arms a dozen times over. He picked a basic stance for her that she could eventually adapt into several of the formal stances—the ones like Windstance, which Adolin said wouldn’t rely on strength or reach as much as mobility and skill.
She wasn’t certain why he’d bothered fetching the metal sparring sleeves, as the two of them didn’t exchange any blows. Other than correcting her stance ten thousand times, he spoke about the art of the duel. How to treat your Shardblade, how to think of an opponent, how to show respect to the institutions and traditions of the duel itself.
Some of it was very practical. Shardblades were dangerous weapons, which explained the demonstrations on how to hold hers, how to walk with it, how to take care not to slice people or things while casually turning.
Other parts of his monologue were more … mystical.
“The Blade is part of you,” Adolin said. “The Blade is more than your tool; it is your life. Respect it. It will not fail you—if you are bested, it is because you failed the sword.”
Radiant stood in what felt like a very stiff pose, Blade held before herself in two hands. She’d only scraped Pattern on the ceiling two or three times; fortunately, most of the rooms in Urithiru had high ceilings.
Adolin gestured for her to perform a simple strike, as they’d been practicing. Radiant raised both arms, tilting the sword, then took a step forward while bringing it down. The entire angle of movement couldn’t have been more than ninety degrees—barely a strike at all.
Adolin smiled. “You’re catching it. A few thousand more of those, and it will start to feel natural. We’ll have to work on your breathing though.”
“My breathing?”
He nodded absently.
“Adolin,” Radiant said, “I assure you, I have been breathing—without fail—my entire life.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s why you’re going to have to unlearn it.”
“How I stand, how I think, how I breathe. I have trouble distinguishing what is actually relevant, and what is part of the subculture and superstition of swordsmen.”
“It’s all relevant,” Adolin said.
“Eating chicken before a match?”
Adolin grinned. “Well, maybe some things are personal quirks. But the swords are part of us.”
“I know mine is part of me,” Radiant said, resting the Blade at her side and setting her gloved safehand on it. “I’ve bonded it. I suspect this is the origin of the tradition among Shardbearers.”
“So academic,” Adolin said, shaking his head. “You need to feel this, Shallan. Live it.”
That would not have been a difficult task for Shallan. Radiant, however, preferred not to feel things she hadn’t considered in depth beforehand.
“Have you considered,” she said, “that your Shardblade was once a living spren, wielded by one of the Knights Radiant? Doesn’t that change how you look at it?”
Adolin glanced toward his Blade, which he’d left summoned, strapped with the sheath and set across her blankets. “I’ve always kind of known. Not that it was alive. That’s silly. Swords aren’t alive. I mean … I’ve always known there was something special about them. It’s part of being a duelist, I think. We all know it.”
She let the matter drop. Swordsmen, from what she’d seen, were superstitious. As were sailors. As were … well, basically everyone but scholars like Radiant and Jasnah. It was curious to her how much of Adolin’s rhetoric about Blades and dueling reminded her of religion.
How strange that these Alethi often treated their actual religion so flippantly. In Jah Keved, Shallan had spent hours painting lengthy passages from the Arguments. You’d speak the words out loud over and over, committing them to memory while kneeling or bowing, before finally burning the paper. The Alethi instead preferred to let the ardents deal with the Almighty, like he was some annoying parlor guest who could be safely distracted by servants offering a particularly tasty tea.
Adolin let her do some more strikes, perhaps sensing that she was growing tired of having her stance constantly adjusted. As she was swinging, he grabbed his own Blade and fell in beside her, modeling the stance and the strikes.
After a short time of that she dismissed her Blade, then picked up her sketchbook. She quickly flipped past the drawing of Radiant, and started to sketch Adolin in his stance. She was forced to let some of Radiant bleed away.
“No, stand there,” Shallan said, pointing at Adolin with her charcoal. “Yes, like that.”
She sketched out the stance, then nodded. “Now strike, and hold the last position.”
He did so. By now he’d removed his jacket, standing in only shirt and trousers. She did like how that tight shirt fit him. Even Radiant would admire that. She wasn’t dead, just pragmatic.
She looked over the two sketches, then resummoned Pattern and fell into position.
“Hey, nice,” Adolin said as Radiant performed the next few strikes. “Yeah, you’ve got it.”
He again fell in beside her. The simple attack he’d taught her was obviously a poor test of his skills, but he executed it with precision nonetheless, then grinned and started talking about the first few lessons he’d had with Zahel long ago.
His blue eyes were alight, and Shallan loved seeing that glow from him. Almost like Stormlight. She knew that passion—she’d felt what it was to be alive with interest, to be consumed by something so fully that you lost yourself in the wonder of it. For her it was art, but watching him, she thought that the two of them weren’t so different.
Sharing these moments with him and drinking of his excitement felt special. Intimate. Even more so than their closeness had been earlier in the evening. She let herself be Shallan in some of the moments, but whenever the pain of holding the sword started to spike—whenever she really thought about what she was doing—she was able to become Radiant and avoid it.
She was genuinely reluctant to see the time end, so she let it stretch into the late evening, well past when she should have called a halt. At long last, Shallan bade a tired, sweaty farewell to Adolin and watched him trot down the strata-lined hallway outside, a spring to his step, a lamp in his hands, blade guards held on his shoulder.