Hector came to the training ground instead of the supply office.
That meant the conversation was not administrative.
Lysander was finishing the morning drill — the weight-shift sequence, the one that had been feeling less like thought and more like movement over the past weeks. He heard the gate and lowered the sword and turned. Hector came in and looked at him the way he sometimes looked at people he was assessing rather than greeting — the specific inventory of a man who tracked physical states the way other men tracked supply levels.
He said: "The right shoulder."
"Yes."
"It is not compensating anymore."
"Miros said the same thing last week."
"Miros noticed it before I did. That annoyed me." He said it flatly, without humor. Possibly it was humor. With Hector it was sometimes hard to tell. "Run the sequence again."
Not a request.
Lysander ran it.
