FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,42
together?” Nicholas abandoned his essay with alacrity. Seiji suspected it was barely begun.
In the salle, Nicholas was more tolerable than anywhere else, because here, he listened to Seiji. Seiji placed his hands, one on Nicholas’s arm and one on Nicholas’s waist, and guided him through the correct motions for a thrust with opposition, where your opponent’s blade was pushing against your own. Nicholas went quiet for once. Seiji nodded to indicate they should proceed.
Nicholas, trying to be showy, as usual, went for a head-cut that Seiji parried with a look of disapproval. Next, Nicholas parried Seiji’s attack, and then Nicholas attacked and was parried in turn. Nicholas went for Seiji with his épée like a silver storm, and Seiji resorted to feints, which wasn’t his usual style. A feint in quarte, a feint in sixte, and a lunge, but Nicholas’s own lunge veered off into an attack. Nicholas beamed foolishly, scoring one point, and became so instantly distracted that Seiji then scored two on him with ease.
From the door, Coach applauded. She was a bright splash of color in the room, zip-up hoodie fire-engine red and blazing white.
“You two fight together far better than you ever fight with anyone else. I like it.”
Nicholas beamed. Seiji scowled.
“I fence excellently at all times.”
“You’re too used to being excellent,” Coach told him. “Nicholas’s speed pushes you to the next level. Technique is learned but it’s also invented, and Nicholas makes you get creative.”
Speed was the first thing Seiji had ever noticed about Nicholas: the way he moved, and how there was a certain faint promise to his tactics. It wasn’t like seeing Seiji’s own skill brightly reflected, the way it was with Jesse, but more like glimpsing light catching faraway water. Seiji respected Coach, so he considered this idea of hers in the context of what he’d learned from Eugene.
Technique is learned.
Good training, like pajamas, cost money. Nicholas didn’t have any. Nicholas hadn’t been trained properly, and it wasn’t his fault. Jesse always said that being inadequately trained meant the fencer, not the fencing, was inadequate, but Jesse was wrong. Nicholas fenced like a Jesse who hadn’t been trained. His flaws weren’t from being lazy or arrogant, though Nicholas was occasionally both those things. It was as though Nicholas was fencing with a stick while the rest of them used épées.
“I’d love to see your flunge, Nicholas,” Coach Williams mused, pining for sabers, as always. Seiji didn’t feel the need to introduce sabers to Nicholas yet. Nicholas had enough problems with the épée.
Attacking with opposition meant pushing against an opponent’s blade. Nicholas had been living his whole life moving in opposition.
It wasn’t fair, Seiji thought with sudden decision. Something must be done. Nothing should get in the way of people being as excellent at fencing as they could be.
Nicholas didn’t look downcast by the injustice of the world. In fact, he was preening. “Did you come to tell us how skilled we are, Coach?”
“Nope. The story of how you achieved your current ranking isn’t an intimate personal insight, Seiji,” said Coach, thwapping Seiji playfully over the head.
Seiji self-consciously readjusted his hair. “It was personal to me.”
“If it was, think about why,” Coach told him. “In fact, tell me—or anyone else—something that is personal to you. And, Nicholas, at least Seiji wrote something. Where’s your essay?”
“Seiji ate it,” Nicholas told her earnestly.
Seiji and Coach reached out and shoved him sideways, one hand on each shoulder, so Nicholas actually stayed right where he was. He grinned at them both, as though he was enjoying being reproached for delinquency.
“Go write your essays,” ordered Coach. “Correctly this time!”
Seiji and Nicholas hastily departed the salle.
“You need to be trained,” Seiji mused as they walked out under the oak trees. “It needs to be one-on-one, and it needs to be intense.”
Nicholas cleared his throat. “Does it?”
“Yes, of course it does!” Seiji said severely. “You are years behind where you should be. There is no choice. I am taking charge of you.”
“Uh,” said Nicholas. “But is that fair?”
“I think it’s fair,” said Seiji. “Coach Williams can’t do everything.”
“Coach Williams is the coolest!”
“Her methods are peculiar but surprisingly effective.”
Seiji’d had many coaches through the years, and received the indirect coaching of Jesse’s father. Seiji had never had a coach like Coach Williams before, any more than he’d had a fencing partner like Nicholas. He wasn’t sure how to feel about her not seeming to take pride in him for being advanced, nor wanting to hold on to his shoulder like a