Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,74

for me.”

He watched in silence as hands shot up, and Yrene selected one—a smaller-boned girl. Yrene took up the stance of attacker, grabbing the girl from the front with surprising intensity.

But the girl’s slim hands went right to Yrene’s face, thumbs to the corners of her eyes.

Chaol started from his chair—or would have, had the girl not pulled back.

“And next?” Yrene merely asked.

“Hook in my thumbs like this”—the girl made the motion in the air between them for all to see—“and pop.”

Some of the girls laughed quietly at the accompanying pop the girl made with her mouth.

Aelin would have been beside herself with glee.

“Good,” Yrene said, and the girl strode back to her place in line. Yrene turned to him, that worry again flashing as she beheld whatever was in his eyes, and said, “This is our third lesson of this quarter. We have covered front-based attacks only so far. I usually have the guards come in as willing victims”—some snickers at that—“but today I would like for you to tell us what you think ladies, young and old, strong and frail, could do against any sort of attack. Your list of top maneuvers and tips, if you’d be so kind.”

He’d trained young men ready to shed blood—not heal people.

But defense was the first lesson he’d been taught, and had taught those young guards.

Before they’d wound up hanging from the castle gates.

Ress’s battered, unseeing face flashed into his mind.

What good had it done any of them when it mattered?

Not one. Not one of that core group he’d trusted and trained, worked with for years … not one had survived. Brullo, his mentor and predecessor, had taught him all he knew—and what had it earned any of them? Anyone he’d encountered, he’d touched … they’d suffered. The lives he’d sworn to protect—

The sun turned bleaching, the gurgle of the twin fountains a distant melody.

What good had any of it done for his city, his people, when it was sacked?

He looked up to find the lines of women watching him, curiosity on their faces.

Waiting.

There had been a moment, when he had hurled his sword into the Avery. When he had been unable to bear its weight at his side, in his hand, and had chucked it and everything the Captain of the Guard had been, had meant, into the dark, eddying waters.

He’d been sinking and drowning since. Long before his spine.

He wasn’t certain if he’d even tried to swim. Not since that sword had gone into the river. Not since he’d left Dorian in that room with his father and told his friend—his brother—that he loved him, and knew it was good-bye. He’d … left. In every sense of the word.

Chaol forced himself to take a breath. To try.

Yrene stepped up to his side as his silence stretched on, again looking so puzzled and concerned. As if she could not figure out why—why he might have been the least bit … He shoved the thought down. And the others.

Shoved them down to the silt-thick bottom of the Avery, where that eagle-pommeled sword now lay, forgotten and rusting.

Chaol lifted his chin, looking each girl and woman and crone in the face. Healers and servants and librarians and cooks, Yrene had said.

“When an attacker comes at you,” he said at last, “they will likely try to move you somewhere else. Never let them do it. If you do, wherever they take you will be the last place you see.” He’d gone to enough murder sites in Rifthold, read and looked into enough cases, to know the truth in that. “If they try to move you from your current location, you make that your battleground.”

“We know that,” one of the blushing girls said. “That was Yrene’s first lesson.”

Yrene nodded gravely at him. He again did not let himself look at her neck.

“Stomping on the instep?” He could barely manage a word to Yrene.

“First lesson also,” the same girl replied instead of Yrene.

“What about how debilitating it is to receive a blow to the groin?”

Nods all around. Yrene certainly knew her fair share of maneuvers.

Chaol smiled grimly. “What about ways to get a man my size or larger flipped onto their backs in less than two moves?”

Some of the girls smiled as they shook their heads. It wasn’t reassuring.

15

Yrene felt the anger simmering off Chaol as if it were heat rippling from a kettle.

Not at the girls and women. They adored him. Grinned and laughed, even as they concentrated on his thorough, precise lesson, even as