“Good morning,” Quentin called.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” Bingle said. He never made the mistake of calling Quentin “Your Majesty,” a form of address that was reserved for the High King.

“I hate to interrupt.”

Bingle didn’t stop his routine, which Quentin supposed meant he wasn’t technically interrupting after all. He climbed the short ladder up to where Bingle was standing. Bingle knotted his hands together, then turned the position inside-out in a move that made even Quentin wince.

“I was thinking maybe you could give me some lessons. In swordsmanship. I’ve had a few already, but I haven’t gotten very far.”

Bingle’s expression didn’t change.

“It will be easier to protect you,” he said, “if you can protect yourself.”

“That was my thinking.”

Bingle unwove his fingers, which took some careful doing, and looked Quentin up and down. He reached forward and slid Quentin’s sword out of its sheath. He did this so quickly and fluidly that although Quentin thought he probably could have stopped him—he had a few inches of reach on Bingle—he couldn’t have sworn to it.

Bingle examined Quentin’s sword, first one side then the other, felt its edge and its heft, pouting thoughtfully.

“I’ll provide you with a weapon.”

“I already have a weapon.” Quentin pointed. “That sword.”

“It’s beautiful, but not right for a beginner.” For a second Quentin thought he was going to do something drastic, like chuck it overboard, but he just placed it on the deck next to the two other swords.

Bingle went below and returned to present Quentin with the training sword he would be using, a short, heavy weapon of oiled steel, blunt and nearly black and devoid of any adornment whatsoever. The blade and the hilt were all made out of one single unbroken chunk of metal. It was the most industrial-looking object Quentin had ever seen in Fillory. It weighed half again what his sword weighed. It didn’t even come with a scabbard, so he wouldn’t get to show off his buff sheathing-unsheathing skills.

“Hold it straight out,” Bingle said. “Like this.”

He straightened Quentin’s elbow and brought his arm up parallel to the deck. Quentin was holding the thing at full extension. He could already feel his muscles starting to cramp.

“Point it straight forward. Keep it out there. Long as you can.”

Quentin was expecting further instructions, but Bingle calmly went back to his isometrics. Quentin’s arm stiffened, then glowed with pain, then caught fire. He lasted about two minutes. Bingle had him switch arms.

“What do you call this style?” Quentin asked.

“The mistake people make,” Bingle said, “is thinking that there are different styles.”

“All right.”

“Force, balance, leverage, momentum—these principles never change. They are your style.”

Quentin was pretty sure his knowledge of physics exceeded Bingle’s by a couple of orders of magnitude, but he’d never thought of applying it that way.

Bingle explained that rather than practice a single fighting technique, his technique was to master all techniques and to deploy them as the circumstances and terrain required. A single grand meta-technique, if you will. He’d wandered Fillory and the lands beyond for years, seeking out martial monks in mountain monasteries and street fighters in crowded medinas and extracting their secrets, until he became the man Quentin saw before him: a walking encyclopedia of swordsmanship. Of the oaths he had made and broken, the beautiful women he had seduced and betrayed to obtain these secrets, it was best not to speak.