Breakfast at the Beauty of the Skies was a considerably livelier affair than dinner had been, the common room filled with the particular bright, bustling energy of travelers preparing to move on rather than settle in — and Levi, Ragna discovered quickly, ate with the same unhurried, unapologetic confidence he did everything else, working through a bowl of porridge and two full servings of bread before either Ragna or Matan had finished their first.
"Mines don't feed you much," Levi explained, entirely unbothered by Matan's raised eyebrow at the third helping. "You learn to eat when the eating's good, because you never know when it won't be. Efficient use of an opportunity, I'd call it."
"I'd call it alarming," Matan said, though he was already waving down the innkeeper for more bread anyway.
***
They set out shortly after, the morning still cool and pale gold over Ruddafoth's rooftops, and Matan explained the day's route as the three of them fell into an easy walking pace beside the cart — Herinhon lay directly between Ruddafoth and the Temple of Eyes, the western border where the Watchers kept their tower sitting close enough that a single determined day's journey, once they'd passed through the duke's city, would carry them the rest of the way.
Ragna said nothing about the name Herinhon carried, or the man who ruled it, though something in his chest tightened at the mention regardless.
They'd been walking perhaps an hour, the road climbing gently into hill country thick with early morning mist, when Matan — apparently unable to resist his self-declared habit of philosophizing when the road stretched long enough to invite it — turned the conversation toward the same question Andell had once posed to an entire yard of Hichus trainees back in Manachy.
"So," he said, glancing between the two younger men walking beside his cart, "when you both finally reach that temple and whatever training waits beyond it — mage, knight, or defender? Every young swordsman I've ever given a ride to seems to have an opinion on it eventually. Curious which way you two lean."
"Defender," Levi said, without a moment's hesitation, the answer arriving as though he'd already settled it years before anyone had thought to ask. "No question about it."
"That was fast," Matan observed.
"Wasn't a hard decision." Levi shrugged, easy and unbothered, though something harder flickered briefly beneath the casual delivery.
"I've spent most of my life serving other people's interests whether I agreed with them or not — Hizosshu's crown, the mine overseers, whatever noble happened to own the contract on my labor that particular season. I didn't get a vote in any of it. The first real choice anyone's ever handed me is what I do with a sword once I'm finally holding one properly, and I intend to spend that choice entirely on myself." He glanced sideways, half-daring either of them to argue. "Call it selfish if you like. I've earned the right to be selfish about at least one thing in my life."
Ragna felt something warm settle in his chest, listening to it — not surprise, exactly, but a quiet, private satisfaction at hearing Levi land on the same conclusion Ragna himself had reached months earlier, for reasons that felt, on the surface, entirely different and yet somehow shared the same root underneath. He didn't say any of that aloud. He simply nodded, once, in a way he hoped conveyed at least a fraction of the respect he felt for the answer.
"And you?" Matan asked, turning to Ragna.
"Defender," Ragna said.
The silence that followed lasted a beat too long to be comfortable.
"Truly?" Matan asked, genuine surprise coloring his voice now, glancing over at Ragna with an expression that had shifted from idle curiosity into something closer to real puzzlement.
"I'll admit, that one catches me off guard. You carry yourself like a knight, lad — disciplined, careful, the kind of young man who thinks before he swings. I'd have wagered good coin you'd choose the crown's path without a second thought."
"I get that a lot," Ragna admitted.
Levi studied him with open curiosity now too, the earlier ease giving way to something more thoughtful. "He's not wrong. You've got the bearing for it. Whole way you hold yourself says sworn to something bigger than me. Strange choice, going the other direction."
Ragna laughed — a real one, caught slightly off guard by how identically both men had arrived at the same startled reaction, as though they'd rehearsed it together the night before. "I promise I've thought about it considerably longer than either of you have had to react to it. Five years, if you want an exact count." He shook his head, still smiling, and let the honest reasoning surface the way it had, months ago, on that manor training yard when Ronan had first pressed him for it.
"The world's larger than any single nation's borders, Matan. Larger than Manachy, larger than Hizosshu, larger than whatever crown a knight ends up kneeling to. I intend to actually see some of it — properly, on my own terms, answering to my own reasons rather than a chain of command that decides, in advance, what I'm and I'm not permitted to do about the things I care about. A knight carries a nation's weight on his back for the rest of his life. I'd rather carry my own weight, and choose freely, each time it matters, exactly how much of myself I'm willing to spend on anyone else's cause."
Matan was quiet for a moment, turning that over with the same unhurried thoroughness he seemed to bring to every genuine question the road handed him. "That's a considered answer, I'll grant you. Still — a decision like that shapes the rest of a man's life, lad. Worth sitting with a while longer before you carve it into stone. Plenty of young men your age have sworn things at fifteen they spent the next thirty years regretting."
"I appreciate the concern," Ragna said, and meant it. "But I haven't sat with it for a week, Matan. I've sat with it for five years — since I was ten years old, watching boys train with real swords through a fence I wasn't allowed past yet, wondering what path I'd choose once I finally earned my own place among them. I've turned this over more times than I can properly count. Losses, wins, draws, every single year of training since — some part of it always circled back to this exact question. I'm not deciding today. I decided a long time ago. Today I'm just finally old enough for the decision to matter out loud."
Something in his voice, quiet and entirely certain, seemed to settle the matter for both of them. Matan nodded slowly, the concern in his expression easing into something more like respect, and Levi, walking a step behind, let out a low, appreciative whistle.
"Five years," Levi repeated. "Alright. That's not a boy's answer. I'll stop needling you about it."
They walked on in comfortable silence for a while after that, the mist burning off the hills as the morning wore on, before Levi broke it again, this time with considerably less philosophy behind the question and considerably more practical urgency.
"Speaking of swords," he said, glancing sideways at the blade riding easily at Ragna's hip, "any chance you'd be willing to show me a thing or two before we actually reach this temple? I can swing a pickaxe well enough to survive a mine, but I've never held a proper blade in my life, and I'd rather not embarrass myself in front of whatever recruiter's standing at the door when we finally get there."
"You want me to teach you swordsmanship. On the road. In a day and a half."
"When you put it like that, it does sound faintly ridiculous."
"It sounds entirely ridiculous," Ragna said, though he was already smiling as he said it. "But yes. I'll show you what I can, for whatever a day and a half of walking lessons is actually worth against five years of real training. Don't expect miracles."
"I'd never dream of it," Levi said, grinning outright now. "Modest miracles will do just fine."
Ragna studied him for a moment — the ragged clothes, the corded muscle built by years of labor rather than deliberate training, the easy, unbothered confidence that had carried Levi through a mine, a captivity he refused to let define him, and now a two-hundred-mile gamble on a future he'd simply decided, plainly and without permission from anyone, to claim for himself.
"You may not look like much yet," Ragna said, "no offense meant."
"None taken. I'm aware of the state of my wardrobe."
"But you're highly capable, Levi. I've watched enough people train over the years to recognize the raw pieces of it when I see them, even underneath everything the mines have piled on top of you. Strength like yours doesn't come from a training yard. It comes from years of surviving something a training yard would never dare ask of anyone. That's not nothing. It's the exact kind of foundation I spent my first year as a Zochus wishing I already had." He clapped a hand on Levi's shoulder, echoing, without quite realizing it, the same gesture Devren had once offered him on his own first miserable day.
"I'll teach you what I can. And I promise you this much — by the time we reach that temple, you won't be walking in looking like a man who's never held a blade. You'll be walking in looking like a man who's simply been too busy surviving to hold one properly yet, which is a considerably more respectable thing to look like."
Levi laughed, loud and genuine, the sound carrying easily across the empty hill road.
"I'll take it," he said. "Come on, then. Teach me something before Matan's mule outpaces the both of us just standing still."