Arthur found the western practice yard occupied when he arrived at dawn. He had taken to training early since the festival, once his body had properly recovered, the particular solitary hour before the academy woke offering exactly the uninterrupted focus he preferred, and had assumed, across three weeks of finding the yard empty, that nobody else had discovered its virtues. Corin was already there.
He moved through a sequence Arthur didn't recognize, sharp and considerably faster than anything he'd shown in ordinary lessons, his practice blade cutting angles that seemed designed specifically to compensate for reach he didn't possess, and Arthur, stopping at the yard's edge, watched him for a moment before announcing himself.
ART: You're up early.
Corin did not stop immediately, completing the sequence properly before lowering his blade.
COR: So are you.
ART: Three weeks now. I thought I had the place to myself.
COR: Four weeks, for me. I assumed the same thing.
They looked at each other across the empty yard, the particular awkwardness of two people discovering they had been unknowingly sharing a private habit, and Arthur, uncertain whether the correct response was to leave, felt the moment stretch several seconds longer than comfortable.
COR: You can stay. The yard's large enough.
ART: Are you sure?
COR: I said it, didn't I.
They trained separately for the better part of an hour, occupying opposite ends of the yard, neither acknowledging the other's presence beyond the occasional glance, and Arthur found, somewhat to his surprise, that he did not mind the company at all. It was Corin who broke first.
COR: Your footwork's inefficient on the reverse pivot.
Arthur stopped mid-sequence.
ART: Excuse me?
COR: Your reverse pivot. You're planting your rear foot before your weight's finished transferring, which costs you roughly half a beat every time you do it. In a real exchange, half a beat is considerable.
ART: My father taught me that pivot.
COR: Then your father taught you a half-beat inefficiency. It happens. Most people learn their fundamentals from someone whose own fundamentals contained flaws they never noticed.
He said it without any particular cruelty, simply a technical observation delivered plainly, and Arthur, considering it honestly, ran the pivot again with deliberate attention and found, uncomfortably, that Corin was entirely correct.
ART: Show me.
Corin blinked.
COR: What?
ART: Show me the correction. You've clearly worked it out, and I've apparently been doing it wrong for six years. Show me.
Something shifted across Corin's composed features, some brief flicker of surprise at being asked directly rather than argued with, and he crossed the yard without further comment. They worked through it together for the next forty minutes.
Corin proved, Arthur discovered, an exceptionally precise instructor, breaking the pivot down into component movements with the particular clarity of someone who had thought considerably harder about swordwork than most people ever bothered to, and Arthur, absorbing corrections with the same patient discipline he'd brought to every difficult thing in his life, felt the half-beat gap close by measurable degrees across the session's course.
COR: Better. Again.
ART: My legs disagree.
CO****R: Your legs are not the relevant authority here. Again.
By the session's end, Arthur's pivot had improved genuinely and noticeably, and both of them were breathing hard, and something in the yard's atmosphere had shifted into something considerably easier than it had been an hour before. They sat against the low stone wall as the sun properly cleared the eastern buildings, sharing the particular companionable exhaustion of people who had worked hard at the same thing.
ART: Why are you out here every morning?
COR: The same reason you are, presumably.
ART: I don't think that's true, actually. I train because I've always trained. It's simply what I do. You've got something else driving it.
Corin was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed somewhere across the empty yard.
COR: I made a promise. Over winter recess. To my father.
ART: What kind of promise?
COR: Two years. When I finish my third year here, I return home, and I drive the Ruined God's forces from Castelgard's northern border myself.
He said it plainly, without any theatrical weight, simply stating a fact he had clearly stated to himself many times since, and Arthur, absorbing it, felt the whole shape of Corin's recent intensity settle abruptly into perfect, obvious sense.
ART: That's an enormous thing to promise.
COR: It is.
ART: Do you think you can do it?
COR: Not currently. That's rather the point of the mornings.
He said it with the particular flat honesty that had, Arthur was beginning to understand, always been underneath the aristocratic composure, and Arthur, sitting beside him in the strengthening morning light, found himself genuinely moved by the sheer weight of what Corin had taken on entirely by choice.
ART: You know I intend to defeat him first.
COR: You've mentioned that, yes.
ART: I haven't changed my position.
COR: I'd be disappointed if you had.
He said it without looking over, and something almost like amusement threaded through the words, and Arthur, hearing it, felt the last of the morning's earlier awkwardness dissolve entirely.
COR: For what it's worth, I no longer think it's impossible. What you said at the Gardens. I thought it was a child's declaration at the time.
ART: And now?
COR: Now I've watched you run twenty-seven circuits without an ability, and I find myself considerably less certain about what is and isn't possible where you specifically are concerned.
ART: That's nearly a compliment.
COR: It's an assessment. Don't inflate it.
They rose eventually, gathering their practice blades as the academy's first bells began sounding across the grounds, and walked back toward the main buildings together without either of them proposing it.
ART: Same time tomorrow?
Corin considered this, and Arthur watched him weigh whether accepting constituted some concession he wasn't prepared to make.
COR: The yard's large enough.
ART: That's not an answer.
COR: It's the answer you're getting.
He walked ahead without further comment, and Arthur, following a few paces behind, found himself entirely certain that Corin would be there the following morning, and equally certain that neither of them would ever acknowledge the arrangement as anything other than coincidental use of a conveniently large training yard. He found he was perfectly content with that.