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other, while some are not measured at all.”
    The opening to the hallway was just a few steps away. Aliver could have been there and outside in just a few seconds. Instead he spun on his heel. “What did you say?”
    “Oh, I said nothing, Prince. Nothing of consequence…”
    “If you have something to say to me, just say it.”
    “I just envy you, of course,” Hephron said. “You sword train, but you never get cracked atop the skull like the rest of us.”
    “Would you like to fence with me, then? If you think my training is lacking…”
    “No. Of course, no…” A note of caution appeared in Hephron’s voice. His eyes darted to his companions, checking to see whether he had over-stepped himself or if he should push farther. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who bruised the royal flesh. Your father could have my head for that.”
    “My father wants no such head as yours. And who says you would be able to touch me, much less bruise me?”
    Hephron looked sad, something Aliver would think on later, though he barely noticed it in the heat of the moment. “We don’t need to do this,” he said. “I meant no offense. Your training is rightly different from ours. You will never need to fight in a real battle anyway. We all know that.”
    Though Hephron spoke these words with a measure of sincerity, Aliver noted only the aspects of it that seemed a taunt, an insult. The prince started toward the equipment rack. “We’ll fence just as you do with the others, with wooden swords. Hold nothing back. Touch me if you can. You have my word you will give no offense.”
    Properly suited up a few moments later, the two youths faced each other inside a hushed circle created by the other students, many of whom glanced over their shoulders, worried lest an instructor return. Hephron had a deceptive style of swordplay. He did nothing with a clear and predictable rhythm. He changed his rate of movement and even the direction of his strike in mid-motion. He would parry in a certain manner for a time, his wrist loose, his sword making sweeping arcs. Just when Aliver had come to anticipate and almost find comfort in the rhythm of it, Hephron would change everything mid-stroke. He would drop bodily an inch or two lower. His stroke would become a thrust. His arm would switch from a downward motion to a jab so quickly that the two differing motions seemed to have nothing to do with each other, one neither the precursor to, nor the result of, the other.
    For some time Aliver managed to fend him off without taking a touch. He did so with motions slightly more frantic than he wished, quick jerks and clumsy shifts of his feet and exhaled breaths, convolutions of his torso that just barely kept him out of reach. The ash sword felt comfortable enough in his hands, but he realized that he rarely found a moment to drive an aggressive strike. He was all countermovements. What he wished to do was find a still moment to fall into a familiar sequence from his training. He fixated on the twelfth movement of the First Form, wherein he would slip away from a sweeping strike coming in from the left; step forward and block the inevitable return; push his opponent’s blade down and to the right, crossing beneath his knees; and then slice upward diagonally into the right side of his torso. With such a cut Edifus had managed to spill his opponent’s viscera in looping knots that caused the man to pause long enough to set his head in the perfect position to be lopped off a few seconds later, an unnecessary flourish, really, but one Aliver had often imagined.
    Three times he began this sequence, but each time Hephron stepped out of it and changed his attack. On the last instance he did so with such speed that Aliver cringed beneath a round sweep that skimmed the crown of his head. Had he taken the force of this directly, he might well have been knocked unconscious. No instructor had ever swung at him like that. He heard one of the others say something, a