CHAPTER 26: EMPTY PLACES

Green Hollow looked slightly exhausted the next morning.

Lanterns still hung beneath several roofs, but daylight revealed wilted flowers, trampled leaves and patches of ash where temporary cooking fires had burned. Several villagers were already sweeping the square while others collected stools, baskets and serving boards abandoned after the celebration.

Joe and Simon walked toward the Talent Hall through air that still smelled faintly of yesterday's smoke.

Simon had not stopped thinking about the merchant's medicine.

"Even if the red bottle only did half of what he claimed, someone who used that regularly could probably train much harder before running short of blood energy."

"Probably."

Simon glanced toward Joe. "You aren't going to tell me I don't know?"

"You don't."

"I knew you were going to say that. I said probably."

"Then we agree."

Simon considered that unsatisfying and continued describing what he would buy if he possessed unlimited silver.

They reached the Hall before he finished.

The compound felt different immediately.

Newly qualified children stood beneath the covered walkway with their parents. Some stared openly at the training yards, while others had become more nervous now that festival excitement had turned into contracts and responsibility.

Joe remembered standing in the same place with Mike.

Passing the stone had not automatically made the children members of Theodere's inheritance.

That happened today.

Parents signed because of the children's age, but Hall still required each child to understand and willingly accept the restrictions. Only after that would the wrist mark appear and training begin.

Joe and Simon left the new families near Theodere's office and crossed toward the training grounds.

The second change was impossible to miss.

The oldest students were gone.

Ten sixteen-year-olds reached the end of Hall support that year. Alex, despite being only fifteen, had also passed an early assessment.

Eleven departures in total.

Joe noticed Alex's absence more than expected.

They had never been close. Alex had considered Joe a useful younger follower, and Joe had allowed him to think so because Alex enjoyed explaining things.

Now that easy source of information about Blackwood was gone.

Once the contracts had been completed, Theodere gathered the Hall.

He had returned from Blackwood only the previous evening. Road dust still marked the lower edge of his outer coat, but travel did little to change the way the training ground settled when he arrived.

Hall stood nearby, slightly behind him rather than directly at his side.

Joe noticed more details like that now.

The two men trusted each other. Hall had followed Theodere through dangerous years before the Talent Hall existed in its current form.

Trust did not erase rank.

Theodere had been the leader then.

He remained the stronger man now.

His speech to the newest students followed familiar ground: learn in order, do not copy techniques you are not ready for, and do not mistake visible movements for understanding.

Then he said something aimed as much at the older trainees as the beginners.

"Most of you will never become true martial artists. That does not make these years worthless. Training gives you strength and choices. What you do with those choices matters."

Joe thought about the empty places in the senior groups.

Later that morning, he learned where the missing students had gone.

Six, including Alex, had been accepted into the Blackwood guard route.

The other five had joined Theodere's new merchant escort business.

Joe heard the details while refilling one of the large water containers beside the rear training sheds.

Several older trainees were talking nearby, with a few younger boys lingering around them.

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"Guard is still better," Bran said.

Joe knew him by sight.

Bran was one of the younger ones in the group, broad-shouldered for his age and stronger than most boys his age, with a narrow smile that appeared too often when somebody else failed.

One of the older boys leaned against the shed wall. "Of course, guard is better. Better pay, town backing, and people know what the badge means."

Bran kicked a loose stone across the packed ground. "Six places from here this year, and Alex takes one before he's even sixteen."

"He passed the assessment."

"Alex has the elder for a grandfather and Master Theodere in the family."

"That didn't make him late Skin Tempering."

Bran's mouth tightened.

Joe continued filling the container.

Alex had advantages.

He also had ability.

The two facts were not mutually exclusive.

The conversation shifted toward the remaining five trainees.

Instead of simply releasing every student who reached sixteen without securing a better position, Theodere had begun hiring some of them to protect merchant carts, travellers and goods moving between Blackwood and the surrounding settlements.

The logic was obvious.

He already knew how they had been trained. They had spent years under Hall's supervision, were bound by Theodere's inheritance contract and had families rooted in communities he knew.

Hiring unknown men in Blackwood would require testing skill, reliability and loyalty.

Former Hall students came partly tested already.

Bran saw another side.

"He gets trainees for years, then hires them for less than guards make while part of their pay still goes through the inheritance terms. Convenient."

The boy beside him shrugged. "Then go back to farming next year."

"That's why it works. The other choices are worse."

Joe lifted the full water container.

Bran was unpleasant.

He was not entirely wrong.

Theodere benefited from the arrangement. He gained workers he already understood and could pay less than Blackwood's official guards.

That did not mean the trainees received nothing.

A sixteen-year-old with martial training but no guard position could return to farming, enter Blackwood alone to search for work, or join an escort company run by someone whose name already opened doors.

Escort work paid less than guard service and carried more obvious risk, but even an ordinary escort could earn cash income far beyond what most young village laborers handled directly.

Both sides benefited.

Neither side needed to be generous.

The guard route had its own economics.

Alex had previously told Joe that Theodere maintained a useful relationship with Blackwood's Guard Captain. Years of sending trained youths into town service had strengthened it.

The Guard Captain received recruits who had already undergone years of disciplined training.

Theodere gained access to recruitment quotas and, according to older trainees, received payment when one of his recommendations was accepted.

Joe did not know the amount.

The arrangement itself made sense.

Around twenty young guards were apparently recruited into Blackwood in an average year, drawn from multiple villages and training groups.

That number bothered Joe.

Twenty replacements each year were substantial for a town that was not enormous.

Some guards would retire.

Some would move to better work.

Others would be injured or leave.

Joe suspected those explanations did not cover everyone.

Alex had spoken about gangs in Blackwood. The town guard was not a national army, but its members carried enough official authority that criminal groups generally avoided attacking them directly. Hurting a guard meant creating a problem with the Guard Captain and everyone behind the badge.

That protection made the position desirable.

It did not make the work harmless.

Merchant escorts had even less institutional protection. Roads carried valuable goods and therefore attracted people willing to steal them.

Joe also remembered the huge animal he had once glimpsed near the river years earlier.

He still knew too little about Blackwood's surroundings to connect all the risks properly.

The only conclusion he trusted was that Green Hollow was safer than many of the opportunities beyond it.

Perhaps Theodere contributed to that safety.

A village with a known martial artist was probably a poor target for anyone searching for easy victims.

Joe had no proof.

He left the thought there.

The departure of the oldest students also changed the Hall in less important but more irritating ways.

A few trainees who had behaved carefully while stronger seniors were present became bolder.

Bran was one.

Several boys around him followed the same pattern.

They did not openly beat younger students or steal where Hall could see. Their behavior stayed small enough to excuse.

Training equipment remained occupied after they had finished because somebody else was waiting for it.

Younger trainees were told to refill water jars they had not emptied.

Paying outsiders heard muttered comments about rich fathers whenever they complained about anything.

Nothing justified stopping the entire Hall.

It simply made certain corners unpleasant.

Joe avoided them when possible.

Simon did not.

One afternoon Bran watched Simon practice and commented that one position looked stiff.

Simon turned toward him.

"It only looks stiff because you're standing at the wrong angle. Hall corrected that position last month, and if I move the shoulder where you're suggesting, the breathing transition becomes worse. Victor showed me exactly why twice, so unless both of them are wrong—"

Bran stared for several seconds, apparently regretting speaking at all, then walked away.

Joe waited until he was out of earshot.

"You could have ignored him."

"He was wrong."

"People can remain wrong without you personally fixing them."

Simon frowned as if Joe had proposed something morally questionable.

"If nobody corrects them, how do they stop being wrong?"

Joe decided the discussion would take longer than Bran had.

Life at the Hall continued.

The newest children learned how to stand without fighting their own bodies.

Older groups moved toward tempering.

Hall travelled to Blackwood more frequently.

Theodere appeared when important matters required him.

And within days of Starlight, Joe quietly crossed a threshold nobody around him knew about.

He was holding the fifth static stance when the resonance became too consistent to dismiss.

For months, blood energy had appeared as warmth, pressure or a faint fullness that was easiest to notice when posture and breathing aligned properly.

Now the six stances have produced something more stable.

The resonance spread through his entire body, and beneath ordinary muscle tension, heartbeat and breath, Joe could vaguely feel blood energy everywhere.

Not clearly.

Not in detail.

But consistently.

When he shifted into the sixth stance, the sensation remained.

He finished.

Then repeated the complete set.

It happened again.

Static Foundation had reached Minor Success.

Almost exactly one year after Joe first entered the Talent Hall.

He stood quietly for several breaths afterward.

Four months of that year had come before his eighth birthday.

The rest had been transformed by Every Hard Work Pays Off.

Joe did not report the breakthrough.

For an ordinary trainee, Minor Success meant moving immediately toward Dynamic Foundation. Remaining at the same stage risked wasting years against an uncertain bottleneck.

Joe's bottlenecks worked differently.

He returned to the first stance.

The talent still responded.

There was more progress available.

For now, Minor Success belonged only to him.