The next morning, Lee woke to find Inyocha already gone.
He found him at the edge of the Scavenger's Market, practicing with a wooden sword clumsy, awkward, nothing like the fluid grace he'd shown as the Shadow Weaver.
"You're holding it wrong," Lee said, approaching.
Inyocha lowered the sword. "I'm not a swordsman. I never was. I used shadows. Darkness. I never learned to fight like a person."
"Then I'll teach you."
Inyocha looked at him. "You have better things to do. The council "
"The council can wait. This is more important."
Lee drew Onyx Tempest not to fight, but to demonstrate. He moved through a series of forms slow, deliberate, showing Inyocha the basic stances.
"The key is balance," Lee said. "Not too rigid. Not too loose. You have to flow like water, but strike like stone."
Inyocha watched, then tried to copy the movements. His first attempt was terrible stiff, jerky, all wrong. His second was better. His third was almost passable.
"You're a fast learner," Lee said.
"I had to be. In the Sunken City, slow learners died."
They trained for hours through the morning, through the afternoon, until the sun began to set and their arms ached and their breath came in gasps.
"You're improving," Lee said.
"I'm trying," Inyocha corrected.
"That's the same thing."
"No. Improvement is results. Trying is effort. I can try my whole life and never improve."
Lee looked at his brother at the sweat on his brow, the determination in his eyes, the faint glimmer of light in his chest.
"You'll improve," Lee said. "Because you have something you didn't have before."
"What's that?"
"Hope."
Inyocha was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded.
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe I do."