The sword felt different in the cold.
Not heavier — different. The grip absorbed the temperature of the air rather than the hand, and the first twenty minutes of the morning drill were always slightly wrong in a way that corrected itself as the metal warmed. Lysander had learned this in the first winter and had developed the habit of beginning the drill earlier in cold weather, working through the wrongness until it became rightness, which took longer when you were also trying to think about something else.
He was thinking about Fylon's four sources.
He was also running the weight-shift sequence.
The two activities were not incompatible. The sequence had stopped requiring conscious direction somewhere in the past month — it ran in the part of the mind that had absorbed it, while the thinking part thought about other things. This was the difference Hector had described. You are starting to see it without looking.
He was starting to think without stopping.
He heard the gate.
