That transition was not very trumpett-tongued. The power did not shock, there was no scene when Ethan James rose a notch higher or exhaled more easily and realized that he had crossed the line. Rather, it came as something silent, a part of the everyday, a shadow in the manner in which his body reacted to something without his mind even being able to ask about it. He had found it one morning when he got out of the bed without leaning on his hand on the wall, and only on recognizing what he had done had he found himself on his feet. The want of that usual, panic-stricken cling threw him off his feet momentarily, as though the planet had gone a step further.
He stood there trying himself, bidding his time till the chastisement that was wont to follow so much thoughtlessly, should be administered. It did not come. His legs shook on a small scale, his ribs ached, but the fall which he had been expecting never came. He sighed and dropped back on his seat more than ever astonished than disappointed, and proceeded no farther. Development, he told himself, did not justify irresponsibility.
Black Stone City went about its mornings in the outside in a habitual indifference. Cart clanked along unequal stones, merchants bickered over room and the odor of smoke and metal hung in the air like a permanent blotch. Ethan did not come out till late in the morning and the city was all the more awake when he arrived. He walked slowly, though no longer as a man who seems to be about to break. The steps he made now were full of weight but not of confidence, but of intention. He took up space and not just survived in space.
In the shack behind, his training was the same as it ever was, breathing and silence. Something though had changed there too. The warmth he used to need to be fussed into being now appeared with fewer objections and responded to his attention like an old wound which would be predictable when irritated. It diffused gradually, timorously, but it diffused nevertheless, working along the lines that had previously distrusted it absolutely. There were pain and pain was pain, but of another nature. Less violent. More... structured.
He was instinctively adjusting, by turning his body sideways, straightening the spine, loosening the muscles of his shoulders before they could pour the strain that would fall upon his back. These were not methods that he recalled having learned. They were what his body provided itself, elicited by repetition and not by memory. He believed them without doubt.
When he trained, time went by in a different manner. Minutes elongated, condensed, became meaningless. By the time he had opened his eyes the sun had risen higher than should be supposed, and his shirt was wet with sweat. His muscles were too tired, with the comfortable exhaustion which does not signify crude fatigue. He stood and located himself slowly, and his slightest trace of warmth lingered on him even as he shut up his concentration.
That linger mattered.
The city spotted him in bits. A glance was a second longer than it needed to be. He walked by a group of people who were conversing. Somebody called his name, trying it out, trying it, like a man trying to put on a glove. Ethan paid no heed to it, and his head was low, and his foot sharp. Attention was a two-sided element, and he was yet not sufficiently armoured to attack it in the full.
Lily noticed, though. She always did.
One evening, when she gave him a bowl of food, she said, You have a different way of walking. "People look at you now."
Ethan took the bowl, thinking of what she said. "Let them," he replied quietly. It is one thing to look, and one thing to see.
She scowled, not convinced, and made no protest. She rarely did these days. Rather, she observed him with pride and discomfort as though she were seeing something delicate form and was also afraid of what would become of it in case she attracted too much attention too early.
On the fifteenth day the concentration was made sharper.
Ethan had already taken an end of his morning session, when he felt someone moving behind his back. Not presence in the literal sense but in the figurative sense of presence. He made no instant turn, completing his respiratory process before opening his eyes and getting up with a cool pace. There were two men a little distance distant, neither known to me, both dressed in the loose practical attire often used by the affiliates of the academy. Their looks were darting about him and not ridiculing.
So it is true, one of them said after a moment. "You're still training."
Ethan met their eyes evenly. "I never stopped."
The other man snorted softly. "With a body like that? Thought you'd be dead by now."
Very well, Ethan said, disappointingly.
They laughed, and there was an edge at it. The other man moved to get near enough so that Ethan could catch the scent of dust and oil on his garments. Marcus Reed does not like surprises, he said carelessly. And especially ones that do not remain broken.
The face of Ethan was not changed. "Then he should avoid them."
The men looked at each other, and were surprised at the absence of fear, or rather, even alarmed at it. After a moment they withdrew, apparently satisfied with interest. "Just a warning," the first said. "Accidents happen."
They went without saying any more, and their laughter subsided with them.
Ethan waited till they were out of sight before he could allow his shoulders to rest. His heart was going faster but his head was clear. Nothing told him better than that how far he had come. He did not repeat their words with fear. He classified them, put them aside and then modified his expectations.
Now Marcus Reed was listening.
Ethan did not go to sleep at once that night. He was listening to the city and tracing its sounds like he traced his body. Some way down the line, they laughed too hard. Farther in the distance, there was a clashing of metal on stone. Life was pressing on all fronts, cold and ruthless. He exhaled himself out of it and pegged himself to the present, so as not to allow anticipation to taint his sleep.
On the following day, he changed his training once again.
He introduced movement.
Nothing poetic, nothing violent. Simple shifts of weight. Rises slowly and steadily out of the sitting postures. Little excursions, which culminated in conscious immobility. Every movement was accompanied with breathing, every breathing with consciousness. It was followed by pain, acute sometimes, but he did not retreat in the face of it, but compensated it instead. Then his body resisted, still adapted, then resisted, but every time a cycle was over it was a little to his advantage.
By evening he was dragged by exhaustion as on days long gone by. Lily saw at once, and demanded he should sleep still further, making food thrust into his hands, with a strangeness of insistence. He obeyed submissively. Fatigue he understood was a barrier to be respected.
The breakthrough was silent on the eighteenth day.
Ethan sat behind the shack, eyes shut, breath stable, when the warmth came out all at once. Not brutally, not violently, but with an assurance which he had never known before. It filled his lower abdomen, radiated outward in slow, conscious wave after wave, touching channels where before it had broken out with resistance and discovered them... welcoming.
He did not feel overcome by pain, but sharp and persistent. His muscles contracted, but the warmth was not scattered, because of the involuntary motions of his body. It pushed, clung, and got established more firmly, and was rooted there in a manner which seemed permanent.
Ethan had drawn a breath, choked though he could not stop, and leant forward to avoid the pit. His eyes were clouded, and then clear, and when the feeling, though in the end, had passed, there remained something indisputable.
Stability.
He stood there a long time afterwards with his heart racing and his sweat streaming down his chin, and he was too scared to move too fast before the moment broke under observation. When he stood at last his legs were holding without any complaint. Weak, yes, but responding, true, on line.
He had laughed once, with low key, the note rather of breathing than speaking.
"That's it," he murmured. "That's the difference."
It did not make him strong. It did not make him dangerous. But it cured him, as he had not been cured since he had woken to this broken body.
The city was another after that. More strident, more strident on the edges. Or perhaps he just had more notice of it now. He noticed that he was being watched openly by a number of people as he strolled back to the shack. No whispers this time. No laughter. But mere curiosity with something.
Uncertainty.
The next night Lily looked at him and she did not even need to ask. She noticed it in the manner of his pose, in the fixedness of his eyes. You have crossed something, she said to herself.
"Yes," Ethan replied. "But not the finish."
Nodding, she knew better than he had imagined.
When Ethan lay down to sleep, with his aching, but evenly distributed muscles, he indulged himself in one, one, dangerous thought. Not out of revenge, not of triumph, but of necessity. It was a long and steep path ahead, was full of dangers, which now were already beginning to awaken, but, perhaps, it was the first time that he did not feel as though he were climbing it on a broken foundation.
It was not only pain that the body was remembering now and soon, but the world would have to remember him.
When Ethan James at last fell asleep, he knew something with a certain quietness. Survival had ended. Preparation had begun. Every breath, every pace, every restraint that was an art of measure, was making a future which should cease to be neglected. Black Stone City took notice of him. After a moment it would be forced to know why.