The second principle arrived on a Wednesday in week six and it looked nothing like the first.
The first principle had been geometry — the polearm as a boundary, an attack on possibility rather than on the body. Vane had spent three days applying velocity to a geometry problem before the distinction resolved, and when it resolved it had the quality of something obvious in retrospect, the way all genuine understanding arrived.
The second principle was different. Ryuken did not explain it at the session's beginning. He had Vane run the eastern polearm forms, all three, with the first principle integrated, and then he stopped him in the middle of the second form.
"What is the spear doing right now," he said.
Vane: "Defining the boundary. The approach angle from the left is closed. The only available entry is from the right and above."
"What else."
Vane thought. "Nothing else."
