The morning Hector changed the drill, Lysander felt it in his wrists first.
Not pain — the specific awareness of a demand the body had not been given before, the muscles around the joint engaging differently when the weight of the sword transferred from the back grip to the forward position at the end of the sequence. Hector watched him run it three times without speaking. On the fourth repetition he came forward and adjusted the angle of Lysander's left elbow with two fingers — not as a criticism, as information.
"The right side is compensating less than last month," Hector said.
"I noticed."
"You've been doing the weight work in the mornings."
"Yes."
"Don't stop."
He stepped back and watched Lysander run the drill again. The new grip produced a different kind of strain — not worse, different. The kind that meant the body was being asked to build something it did not yet have. He ran it six times until the form stopped feeling like thought and started feeling like movement.
