Meeting Master Carlen Rowen

1588-02-02
Lynden, Distant Isles

The day after he found me, Rowen led me inland. Scrub and stone gave way to pale timber and low eaves. Nets hung to dry. Gulls worried at fish heads. Children chased chickens between racks and boats.
“This is Lynden,” he said. “Some call it a backwater. It suits me.”

He set me on a log outside his shed and poured ale that tasted of apples and smoke. “Tell me again why you left Bonona.”
I spoke of whispers in a tavern, a cup with venom, a duke with plans, and the feeling that art had been yoked to politics. Rowen’s brow knotted and he spat into the dust. “Those courtly fencers think politics is a duel. When cities scheme against the Empire, farmers and fishermen bleed.”

He railed at soft hands and silk doublets and councils that talk while borders burn. He said the free cities should have taken the capital and set things straight. When I spoke of Master Maros and the eight pointed star and how measured steps can make a blade sing, his mouth tugged to a reluctant half smile.

“We will teach each other,” he said. “You show me your star. I will show you how to cut through a boar’s spine.”

We shook on it. Then he tested my hands. He had me trace a compass of eight rays in the salt sand with the toe of my boot. I set my feet as Maros had taught. Rowen pressed a palm to my chest and lifted my chin. “Keep the spine proud,” he said. “Grace has its use. Now give me a cut that would scare a storm.”

I cut as von Lychenar had taught me and recovered on the star as in Bonona. Rowen answered with a broad sabre arc that hummed like a taut string and turned my guard aside. He showed how his people borrow the wind. Hips turn first. Shoulder follows. The arm speaks last. We traded phrases until the light thinned. His swing met my line. My line tamed his swing. Grit and grace shared a single breath.

When we paused he pointed at the grey water. “Out there you learned hunger and thirst. Keep that in your cuts. Let your singer’s breath smooth the edges.”
I felt my masters stand near. Lychenar’s discipline. Merryen’s ambition. Maros’s poise. Rowen’s rough humor square before me. The path grew stranger, yet my hands were steadier for it.

That night the hamlet settled to creak and hush. I tuned my battered lute and let a slow air drift through the rafters. Rowen listened in the doorway with arms folded. “Keep that,” he said. “A song can carry steel without making the heart hard.”
I slept with salt in my hair and a sabre’s rhythm in my bones, sure that in Lynden I would learn how grace and grit can share a blade.