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Hermannsburg smiled at his daughter. He rose from the bed and cut at the air with the wooden sword. Lynn felt the light movement of air on her face and heard the sword’s thick swoosh through the air, but it was nothing like the metallic ring of a real sword.
    “Who have you been practicing with?” Colonel Hermannsburg asked.
    “Nobody, I’ve just been practicing the movements you showed me.”
    “I suppose I must blame myself for your love of swords. Perhaps I treated you too much like a son, but there’s not much we can do about that now, is there?”
    Lynn didn’t answer.
    “Come on, then,” her father said as he tossed Lynn the second wooden training sword. Lynn managed to catch it even though it bounced clumsily off her fingers and a quick dart of pain flew up her arm from the needle wound. Lynn was annoyed that her finger continued to sting when there was little more than a tiny red mark to show for it. She preferred it when she had proper bruises to show off.
    She stood in front of her father and gave the sword a quick twirl around her arm. She had seen Melbourne do that in the training yard and had decided that if he could do it, so could she. She had dedicated herself from that moment to learning it. It was like her father had once said: if you’re no good with a sword, at least look like you know what you’re doing. A little fear can cause some enemies to make big mistakes.
    Her father laughed at her flourish. “Attack then, sword dancer,” he said.
    Lynn swept the wooden blade toward her father’s unarmed side and he batted the attack playfully away. She struck again, this time with a straight lunge, and again her father parried. Lynn moved quickly, just like he had taught her. Short, sharp attacks at first, nothing that would overbalance or overcommit her, but a constant stream of strikes and feints that forced her father to defend himself. Lynn imagined the great ringing as their steel blades clashed.
    Colonel Hermannsburg blocked two or three more of these strikes before he found his opening. Lynn thrust forward. Her eyes went wide in a brief moment of panic as she felt the sole of her light slipper give way beneath her leading foot. She looked down to see that her foot had landed on a discarded dress that glided easily across the polished floor of her bedroom. As her foot slid away her weight went too far backward. She recovered as quickly as she could but she was not fast enough. Her father sidestepped and Lynn felt his wooden sword against her neck. He slapped the flat of his blade against her bare skin, hard enough to hear the thwack but light enough that his daughter would not be hurt.
    “A swordsman must always watch their feet,” he said with a smile, “but a master swordsman will always watch his opponent’s feet too.”
    Lynn felt the wood of her father’s sword move against her neck as she breathed.
    “Do you yield?” her father said.
    “I yield,” Lynn said.
    As Colonel Hermannsburg pulled the sword away from his daughter’s throat, smiling at her, Lynn leaped into action. Just as she felt the wood leave her flesh she moved her sword upward in a smooth arc, stepping back as she did. Her wooden blade connected with her father’s fingers, a little harder than she had intended. She heard a meaty crack and her father dropped his sword.
    Lynn felt her insides cool and her breath stick as she saw Colonel Hermannsburg’s playful expression dissolve. He rubbed his fingers and then curled them in and out experimentally. He reached out with his other hand and grabbed the blade of Lynn’s wooden sword, tearing it from her grip. Lynn felt the hilt of the sword pull from her palm. In that moment she realized just how easy her father had been on her in their mock duel. He surely had enough strength to snap her wooden toy across his knee.
    Lynn looked up at her father. His face was not typically angry—most would have said he looked emotionless—but Lynn had seen the softness around his