“I've stopped to cycle two or three times,” he said, but then he wondered if that were true. “Maybe it was four times. Or...six?” How long had he been here?
He glanced at the candle, which was a half-melted lump of wax in the middle of the circle. The woman who'd sold it to him had sworn it would burn all night. Perhaps it had.
A break couldn’t hurt, so he sat beneath the dummy next to her.
Without a word, she passed him a rag. He nodded his thanks, then began wiping the sweat from his head and neck.
“Trick to an Iron body,” Yerin said, “is to recognize when you're tired and when you're not. Gets harder to tell the difference. You'll pick it up after a while, but until you do, you're more than likely to run your feet down to the nubs.”
Lindon's eyelids did feel heavy, his arms ached, and his hands were cramped...but those sensations faded almost as quickly as they came. Madra trickled steadily from his core, called by his Bloodforged Iron body to heal his fatigue.
“Is that so?” He looked at his hands, feeling the tight ache in his knuckles drain away with his madra. “Incredible. I really can’t tell.”
“That’s how you run into more trouble than you can handle. If you ask me, you’ve got…” Something shivered through Lindon’s spirit, and he recognized the touch of her spiritual sense. “…well, that’s a puzzle and a half.”
He’d seen Yerin walk into battle with a smile on her face. Now, after scanning him, she was frowning and mumbling to herself, staring at his stomach.
Though he had just toweled off, sweat broke out over his skin again.
Lindon dove into his own soul, almost in a cycling trance, clutching at his core with both hands. “What’s wrong? What have I done? Did I cycle too much? Am I dying?”
“You’re about a thousand miles from dying,” she muttered. “As expected of an Underlord, I guess.”
“Eithan? Did Eithan do something to me?”
“He handed you that Iron body, true?” Lindon didn’t remember Eithan handing him anything, but he guessed it was true enough. “Unless I’m wide of the mark, it looks like it’s keeping you fresh. You could work your body until your core’s dry.”
Lindon had felt the same thing already, but he had assumed it was a function of the Iron body. “ my ignorance, but isn’t that normal?”
“It’s normal for the Undying Lizards of the Bluefire Desert. I hear it’s normal for some plants.” She jabbed him lightly in the stomach. “People get tired sometimes.”
New possibilities bloomed in Lindon’s imagination, and he had to resist the urge to start taking notes. “As long as I restore my madra, I could keep training? How often should I stop and cycle, do you think?”
“Whoa there, rein it in. If you could work all day and night, you’d be fighting Eithan in a year, not one little Jai Long. The spirit needs rest just like your body does. You don’t want to strain your madra channels, I’ll tell you that one for free.”
She clasped her hands together and stretched them over her head. “You're an Iron, not a Remnant; you still need sleep. Food. Your spirit’s a weapon, and you've got to keep it clean and polished. But you don’t have to worry about pulling a muscle, or collapsing in a heap. I’d kill you for that, if I thought I could take it off your Remnant.”
Lindon chuckled uneasily, wiping his face with the towel again. So he could work for longer than most people, but not too long. What was the limit? How could he tell? It was easy to know when he was running out of madra, but what did strained madra channels feel like? How much more time was his Iron body buying him, exactly?
Lost in thought, he almost handed the sweaty rag back, but he caught himself at the last minute and tucked it inside his outer robe. He could wash it in the lake in the morning.
Lindon dipped his head in thanks and spoke carefully. “Gratitude. You’ve given me a lot to think about. But if you’ll allow me another question: what are my chances? With Jai Long? Do I have enough time?”
“You’ve got no time at all,” Yerin said immediately. “Sleep or no sleep, if Eithan doesn't have something planned for you, then you're dry leaves to the fire.”
The truth of that settled onto him, and Lindon couldn't think of anything to say.
Yerin scratched the side of her neck, and in the dim light, he thought he saw her flush. “I, uh...sorry. Didn't intend to say it like that.” She hesitated for another moment. “When I was Iron, my master didn't press me to fight a Highgold in a year's time. That's a rotten gamble, no matter what training he gives you.”
Yerin knew he couldn’t do it. That he was going to die in a year.
He stared at the dummy across the circle because he didn’t want to see the truth on her face.
“I’m not going to gamble,” he said quietly. “There are other ways to get to him, before the duel. He eats, he sleeps, just like anybody else. He has enemies. He has a family.”
Yerin’s Goldsign arched, as though the blade were trying to get a better look at Lindon’s face. “Dark plans for an Iron,” she said, voice dry. “You want to hold his crippled little sister hostage, do you think? You want to go to his enemies for help instead of Eithan?”
“I don’t know enough about him yet,” Lindon said, embarrassed. “You know, there’s always poison. Ambush.”
“There’s always poison,” she repeated. “Yeah. You could poison his food, then wait until he falls asleep. Put a different poison on your knives, so even if he wakes up, he can’t…”
She trailed off, blinking rapidly.
Her master. That was what the Jades of the Heaven’s Glory School had done to her master.
Lindon fell to his knees, pressing his forehead against the cool wooden floor. “I did not think. I—”
He glanced up and saw that she was holding up a hand for silence. She waited for a few seconds, visibly swallowing a few times, before she spoke. “They were dogs and cowards,” she said at last. “Don’t think like them. You don’t learn to stand against your enemies by crawling in the dirt.”
“As you say. I have no excuse.”
“You’re on the path now, stable and true. In a year, you won’t recognize yourself.”
He certainly couldn’t disagree with her now, not to her face, but he filed his plans away carefully in the back of his mind. Surely Eithan wouldn’t mind if he prepared for contingencies.
Lindon had just risen to his feet when the door slammed open, and Eithan marched in, carrying a lantern caging a burning star. It lit the barn like midday, making Lindon wince and shield his eyes.
Eithan saw them and paused, as though he'd just noticed them. “Oh, I'm sorry, I hope I'm not interrupting anything.” Before they could respond, he added, “I was just being polite, I heard it all.”
Lindon was going to find it hard to relax over the next year, if Eithan listened to every word he ever spoke.
The Underlord walked over to the melted candle and kicked it aside, sending a puff of smoke into the air and chunks of wax tumbling across the floor. He set his lantern in its place at the center of the course, then turned to face them with hands on hips.
“I will be truthful with the two of you: I'm facing a bit of a crisis here.”
His demeanor was cheery as ever, but his smile had shrunk to nothing more than tightened lips. Maybe this was his serious face.