The bread was dry, but full of flavor. Honey and nutmeg, hints of cinnamon. Had Berip baked this bread the day he died? Anji curled in on herself, favoring the ankle, wrapping her body around the bread. She pictured the cozy kitchen where it had been baked and felt a tear well up, blinked it away, and started on the meat. Tough. Tasteless. She ate it in two bites.

They sat still, the wind dropping with the temperature. Kit inched back against the weathered stone opposite Anji. She let her hands drop together in her lap, legs crossed, and breathed those long, crackling breaths, like a bellows clogged with wet clay.

“Why do you do that before you fight?” Anji asked.

“What?”

“That thing, that pose.”

Kit blinked. “I have many poses. Which are you referring to?”

Anji rolled her eyes and laid her arms on the ground. “You know, before you start fighting, you go all limp.”

“It’s a basic technique. Your aunt never taught you?”

Anji shook her head.

“I still the body, and the mind follows. The still mind may do anything. I can tear through anyone, I can win mismatched fights. With a mind unclouded, pain is nothing, fear is no one.”

The words sounded like a mantra more than an explanation.

“Could you show me how you—” The question fell out of Anji’s mouth before she had time to stuff it back in.

“I don’t see the use in—”

“Please,” Anji said, “for what’s to come. If what you say is true, if it can help with the pain … let me face it with—with a still mind.”

Both of them jumped at the distant crack of thunder outside. Kit turned back to Anji.

“Do you feel the tips of your fingers?” she said, sitting straighter. Her face was sheened with sweat. Anji wondered if it was a good idea after all to be asking for this. Maybe the woman needed sleep. Maybe they both did, and these kinds of exercises would prove less than useless for what lay ahead. No amount of whatever it was Kit did before a fight could help with actual torture, could it?

“You’re not even trying,” Kit said, slumping and sliding back against the wall.

“No!” Anji said. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t—it doesn’t matter. I was just thinking—”

“Yes,” Kit said slowly, head bobbing slowly up and down. “That’s your first problem.”

Anji frowned. “What, thinking?”

“Too much of it,” Kit said. “I asked if you could feel your fingertips, and you went off somewhere else.” She patted at the ground. “Stay here.”

Anji sat straight, trying her best to mimic Kit’s posture.

“Your fingertips—feel them buzzing?” Kit said. “And it helps to close your eyes.”

Of course, Anji thought, but she closed them.