By midday they were all clinging to the fang like particularly stubborn flies. It wasn’t graceful, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but it was progress. Toby’s right hand found the stone first now, more often than not. The drag came quicker, the strange agreement between skin and wall no longer feeling like a miracle, just a hard-won trick. When he caught it clean, his boots lifted, his left hand followed, and for a few breaths at a time the world narrowed to breath, grip, and the slow creep of his own weight along the curve of the fang.

  Maxwell had made his instructions clear: no one went up until they could go around. So they worked the lower ring—hands starting at full reach, feet scrabbling for balance more than purchase, moving sideways along the stone. Reece took to it fastest. Once he found his flow, he could shuffle his way along a quarter, sometimes a third of the circle before the connection stuttered and spat him out. He’d drop with a grunt, shake out his hands, then go right back in, chasing the point where his mind always slipped.

  Toby was less consistent. Once, glorious as a dream, he matched Reece’s distance—fingers burning, forearms screaming, the world spinning slightly as he finally let go. Most of the time, though, he lost it after the first or second placement. Sometimes he couldn’t even find the first, the fang denying him with the same blank indifference it had shown on their first day.

  Zak, for a long while, had nothing but bruises and creative curses to show for his efforts.

  “Come on,” he snarled at the stone after one particularly undignified slide, palms skidding, boots scrabbling, dignity left somewhere back at his second failed attempt. “You let these two on, you old tooth. I’m better company than they are.”

  The fang remained unmoved. But eventually, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion, perhaps because even stone got bored, it relented. Toby was rubbing grit off his hands when he heard Zak suck in a breath that didn’t end with a complaint. Zak hung there, both hands flat to the wall, boots just clear of the ground. His eyes were wide, wild with concentration and triumph.

  “Look,” Zak whispered. “Look, look—”

  He shifted his right hand sideways, fingers creeping. The grip held. His left followed, just as careful. Two placements. Then three. On the fourth reach, his left hand slid, and the wall shrugged him off. Zak hit the ground on his backside, air whooshing out of him in an undignified grunt. He lay there for a heartbeat, then burst out laughing.

  “Four,” he said between breaths. “I had four.”

  “Three,” Reece said, though he was grinning too. “You lost the fourth.”

  “Four,” Zak insisted. “I touched it. That counts.”

  Toby held out a hand and hauled him up. “Better than nothing,” he said. “Better than half the morning.”

  Zak flexed his fingers, winced at the blisters, and smiled anyway. “Saints. It actually worked.”

  They took a break after that—more because Maxwell ordered it than because any of them wanted to stop. They sat in the fang’s patchy shade, backs to the stone, waterskins in hand. The air still held yesterday’s cool at its core, but the sun was climbing, turning the wet plains into a wide, slow oven. Reece tipped water into his mouth, swallowed, then glanced at Maxwell’s splinted arm with a frown.

  “This is good training, Ser,” Reece said. “I mean it. But… shouldn’t we head back? You should have a proper healer see to that.” He nodded at the bandaged limb. “And a bed that isn’t a tent floor.”

  Maxwell considered him for a moment, then looked out over the plains.

  “We will,” he said. “Soon enough.”

  Toby wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. “We should be scouting,” he said. “Not just… crawling on a rock.”

  “This is scouting,” Maxwell said.

  Zak snorted softly. “If the elves see us, they’ll die laughing.”

  Maxwell ignored him. His gaze stayed on Toby. “Once you get up there, you’ll see what I saw,” he said. “How the land folds. Where water runs. Where smoke would show first if something started burning. Then we go home.” He jerked his chin toward the fang. “You want to give Sire Kay news worth hearing? Bring him more than guesses.”

  Silence settled for a moment, broken only by the soft whisper of the breeze across damp grass. Toby thought of the view Maxwell had described, of the way his own eyes had always been trapped at ground level. He swallowed, nodded once, and let the argument go. After a few more mouthfuls of water and a stretch that felt more like creaking, Zak got to his feet with a grunt.

  “I’m going to try something,” he said.

  “That sentence has never ended well,” Reece muttered.

  Zak waved him off and walked around the fang, into the full glare of the sun on the far side.

  Toby shaded his eyes, watching him go. “Heat’s gone to his head,” he said.

  “Won’t be the first thing it’s ruined,” Reece replied.

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  Toby and Reece went back to their own struggle, and when Toby was starting to think Zak was using the chance to hide on the far side and slack off, he proved him wrong. They heard him before they saw him—a low, breathy chuckle that carried oddly off the stone. His voice came from above rather than around.

  “Saints save me,” Reece breathed. “Tell me I’m not hearing that from where I think I am.”

  They stepped back, craning their necks. Zak crawled into view along the curve of the fang, just above head-height. He clung to the stone on all fours, hands and bare feet spread wide, toes splayed like a frog’s. His boots dangled from his belt by the laces, bumping his hip with each careful shuffle.

  “Afternoon,” he said, grinning down at them. “Miss me?”

  Maxwell made a sound that was half-snort, half-laugh. “Maybe that storm elk knocked something into place instead of out of it.”

  Zak beamed. “I figured it out,” he said. He peeled one foot off the stone, wiggled his toes in the air in a showman’s flourish, then planted it back without falling. “It’s much easier hanging on when your arms aren’t doing everything by themselves.”

  “Are you serious?” Reece muttered, torn between admiration and annoyance.

  Maxwell nodded once. “He is,” he said. “But that’s not why I made you do hands only first.”

  Toby squinted up at him. “Why?”

  Maxwell shaded his eyes with his good hand, studying Zak the way he might study a piece of gear he’d seen used wrong but effectively.

  “Because your hands are the most important to get right,” he said. “If they’re secure, your mind stays where it should be. You start with your feet and you’ll trust them too much. Sure they give you power, but not balance.”

  Zak wriggled his toes again. “My feet are offended.”

  “I’ve yet to see a man climb with his feet alone,” Maxwell said. “And when they slip, it’s their head that hits first, not their heels.”

  Zak’s grin faltered a fraction at that.

  “So,” Maxwell went on, fixing him with a look, “if you’re comfortable on all fours, finish a full lap at that height. No showboating. Then come down and try again with hands only.”

  Zak pulled a face. “Of course there’s a catch.”

  “There’s always a catch,” Reece said.

  Maxwell’s gaze slid to Toby and Reece. “And you two,” he said, nodding toward their boots, “might be about ready to lose those. Bare feet will teach you things leather won’t.”

  Toby exchanged a glance with Reece. Then he sat down with a grunt and tugged at his laces. His socks were still a little stiff with old damp; peeling them off felt like freeing something. The earth was cool under his soles, rough with grit and flattened grass.

  Zak crabbed his way along the curve of the fang, inching sideways. Up close, his new confidence looked more like stubborn care—fingers spread wide, toes gripping, each movement tested before he committed his weight. He moved faster than before, but not by much. Zak made it all the way around.

  “Lap,” he panted when he came back into view. “Told you I was better company.”

  “Don’t fall in love with it,” Maxwell said. “Hands only. Again.”

  Zak groaned, but he obeyed. He dropped back down, shook out his arms, then set his palms to the stone with a seriousness Toby didn’t often see on his face.

  Toby stepped up to the wall beside him, now barefoot. The first touch of his toes to the fang sent a small, surprising jolt of awareness through him—a sharp sense of where he ended and the stone began. His toes spread, bracing his weight. When his right hand found that now-familiar drag, his foot seemed to know how to follow. All fours felt almost easy. With both hands and both feet agreeing with the stone, the Art’s strange grip didn’t feel like such a thin thread. It thickened, steadied. Toby moved sideways, surprised by how light his arms felt with his legs taking their share of the weight.

  “Saints,” Toby muttered. “It’s like cheating.”

  “Good cheating,” Reece said from his other side. He was moving too, bare feet plastered to the pale surface, face intent. “If I fall, I’d rather land with less space between me and the ground.”

  They made their first lap on all fours faster than Zak had, sweat prickling at their backs, fingers burning but not failing. When they dropped off on the far side, Toby’s lungs were pulling hard, but his grin came easier than it had in days.

  “Again,” Zak said, breathless. “Before Ser changes his mind.”

  “Hands only,” Maxwell reminded them again unnecessarily.

  The challenge returned. Without his feet stuck, Toby felt naked. He found the first grip, then the second, and suddenly every small wobble meant something. His boots had hidden that before. Now every tremor ran through skin to muscle to mind.

  Reece was the first to tame it. He moved like he did with a sword—not flashy, but precise. A hand, a breath. A small shift. Another hand. When his concentration held, it held hard. Toby watched, half-hanging, as Reece inched his way along the curve until the far side swallowed him.

  “Lap,” Reece called a minute later, voice thin with effort but triumphant.

  Zak let go, landing with a thud. “That’s rude,” he said. “Absolutely rude. I’m supposed to be the inspiring one.”

  Toby gritted his teeth and went back in. This time he made it farther—past the point his shoulders usually started to shake, past the small notch in the stone he’d started using as a private marker. The link finally snapped somewhere past three-quarters, dropping him flat-footed on the grass.

  “Three-quarters,” Zak said. “That’s almost respectable.”

  By the time the sun slid low, painting the damp plains in long, tired gold, Zak had matched him. Reece finished two more laps, each one won with visible strain. Toby’s forearms felt like they’d been filled with hot sand. Zak’s hands were a map of raw patches and half-burst blisters. Maxwell watched them all with his good arm folded across his chest, mouth a thin line that wasn’t displeased.

  “That’s enough,” he said at last. “Break. Eat. Sleep.”

  Zak opened his mouth, probably to argue for one more try.

  Maxwell cut him off with a look. “Tomorrow,” he said, “after you’ve warmed up… it’s time to climb.”

  Toby glanced up at the fang, its height etched sharp against the evening sky. His tired fingers twitched.

  Tomorrow.