The instructor's voice carried across the yard without losing its edge.

  "Down!"

  The line hit the dirt. Coin hit the dirt with them, surface flat against packed earth worn smooth by generations of trainees doing exactly this.

  "Up!"

  The line pushed. Coin pushed. The motion was different for something without arms—a pulse of force through the center, lifting the whole form off the ground in a smooth arc that technically satisfied the requirements. The instructor hadn't complained yet. That meant it counted.

  "Down!"

  The smoke on the horizon dulled the early light, black against the morning sky.

  "Up!"

  FORM: IMMACULATE.

  DIFFICULTY: NONEXISTENT.

  The skinny one to Coin's left was struggling. His arms had started shaking somewhere in the middle and hadn't stopped, the tremor visible in his shoulders every time he pressed up. His breath came in sharp pulls. His face had gone red and tight.

  Coin finished early and held position, waiting for the rest of the line to catch up.

  VULNERABILITY: DETECTED.

  OPPORTUNITY: ADJACENT.

  "Your elbows are flaring out," Coin said. Helpful. Constructive. The stuff that built trust between training partners. "You're losing power on the press. Keep them tucked and you'll finish stronger."

  His head snapped toward Coin. His arms kept shaking. His next rep was worse than the one before, the criticism landing on deaf ears.

  "Down!"

  Everyone went down. The trainee's chest hit the dirt harder than it needed to.

  "Also your breathing," Coin added. "You're holding it at the bottom. Exhale on the press. Inhale on the way down. Basic efficiency."

  "Shut up," the trainee managed between breaths.

  The elbows were still flared. The breathing was still wrong. Coin had given the corrections and the corrections had not been applied and the trainee was still struggling and this was not how the exchange was supposed to go.

  "Coin is helping." The frustration crept in despite Coin's best efforts. "The help is free. Coin has provided value. You receive the value. You feel grateful. We become friends. This is very simple."

  His arms shook. His face did something complicated.

  "Coin doesn't understand the hesitation. The framework is sound. Coin provides assistance, you accept assistance, mutual appreciation develops, bonding occurs. It's transactional. You're not completing the transaction."

  Someone in the next row had stopped mid-rep to stare. Then someone else. Heads were turning down the line, bodies holding position, eyes finding the coin who was explaining friendship like a diagram.

  AUDIENCE: GROWING.

  "Your form is still wrong, by the way. The elbows. Coin mentioned the elbows. You should be appreciating the help. The appreciation leads to bonding. Coin has studied this. Why is this not working."

  His arms gave out. He caught himself on his elbows, face inches from the dirt, breathing in sharp gasps. He turned his head toward Coin. The expression on his face had moved past anger. He was done with Coin.

  The whole yard was watching now. Everyone frozen mid-exercise, witnessing whatever this was.

  Coin gleamed in the early light.

  "Perhaps if Coin explains it again—"

  "Talking in line?"

  The instructor's voice cut across the yard. Coin went silent. The trainee went silent. Everyone who'd been watching went back to their push-ups with the sudden urgency of people who'd just remembered where they were.

  "Since someone wants to give a speech, everyone gets extra. Thank your neighbor."

  The word moved through the line like a wave. Someone made a sound that wasn't quite a word. The guy next to Coin pressed his forehead into the dirt for a moment before pushing back up.

  TEAM SPIRIT: ACCELERATED.

  Coin finished the extra before most of the line finished their original count. Held position. Waited. The surface caught the early light and threw it back because the angle was good and Coin had standards.

  He collapsed on his last rep. Chest heaving. Arms done. He lay in the dirt and breathed and stared at the sky and didn't look at Coin.

  "Strong finish," Coin said.

  He didn't respond.

  Coin took this as progress.

  ***

  The mess hall was loud before it was full.

  Coin had a tray. The tray had food on it. Coin sat near the middle of the nearest long table, positioned where the overhead lamp threw the best light, and watched the room fill.

  TRAY: PRESENT.

  POSITION: OPTIMAL.

  The tables were heavy wood, gouged and stained, long enough that conversations at one end didn't reach the other. Benches on both sides, bolted to the floor. Tables filled the hall, and trainees packed in along them fast, trays scraping down, bodies settling wherever a gap existed. The serving line moved steady.

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  The noise was still thin. Spoons on bowls. Bench wood creaking. The occasional low voice, kept careful, nobody committed to a full conversation yet. First-meal math. Everyone running numbers on everyone else.

  Coin was running numbers too. Every seat that filled was a candidate. Every body that dropped onto a bench within arm's reach was an opportunity, sitting right there, waiting to receive value.

  A trainee dropped onto the bench to Coin's left, already shoveling stew before he'd finished sitting. Head down, elbows wide.

  "You're gripping the spoon too high," Coin said.

  The trainee's hand stopped halfway to his mouth. Stew dripped off the spoon and hit the table.

  "Choke down on the handle. Closer to the bowl. You'll get better leverage on the scoop and you won't have to tilt your wrist so far on the delivery. It's an efficiency issue."

  The trainee looked at Coin. The stew kept dripping. His face held an expression that contained several questions, all of which he decided not to ask.

  He went back to eating. Same grip. Faster now.

  "Also," Coin said, "you're swallowing too soon. Break the food down more before it goes. The stew has root vegetables in it, sits heavy, and if you're not working those thoroughly you're losing ground by afternoon. Coin isn't telling you how to eat. Coin is optimizing your output."

  The spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. The trainee tipped it back, drank the broth straight from the rim, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stood up. The bench shuddered as his weight left it.

  He took his tray and moved to the far end of the table where a gap had opened between other trainees. Sat down. Didn't look back.

  SEED: PLANTED.

  The bench space to Coin's left stayed open. A trainee approaching the table glanced at the gap, glanced at Coin, and kept walking. Found a seat further down.

  The room was loud now. The thin quiet of the first few minutes had broken open into the full sound of bodies packed together with food and permission to stop being careful. Voices layered. Someone laughed near the serving line. A burst of conversation erupted and settled and rose again, the rhythm of strangers becoming a group through the slow process of discovering that other people were also nervous and also hungry and also willing to talk about it.

  A voice carried from the far end of Coin's table. Male, pitched to reach without shouting, the exact volume that said I want to be heard by more people than I'm talking to.

  "—honestly wasn't bad for a first session. Get through the conditioning early, build the baseline, makes sense. The real thing is going to be who you train with. That's what matters. You want people around you who push the pace, not drag it."

  The speaker had dark hair and a coat that was cut better than anything else in the room. Something with embroidery at the collar, worn like it belonged on him. Easy smile, jaw set at the angle of someone who'd practiced looking relaxed. He was talking to the person beside him but his body was angled toward the table, toward the room, toward anyone willing to listen. And people were listening. The ones across from him had stopped eating. Someone further down had turned on the bench.

  He knew it. Every word landed at the right speed, every gesture stayed inside the frame of casual, and the performance was so practiced it had stopped looking like anything rehearsed to anyone who wasn't paying attention.

  Coin was paying attention. Coin had watched people build rooms around themselves since before the word for it existed. Courts, campaigns, merchant caravans. The technique was always the same. Warm eye contact, open hands, making space for other people's opinions so they'd feel like part of the deciding.

  The duelist.

  "We should stick together," he said, gesturing at the people around him with his spoon, looping them in. "Seriously. Help each other out. That's how you get through something like this. You find good people, you hold on to them."

  Nods from the people around him. Someone agreed out loud. The duelist absorbed it without breaking stride, folding the agreement into his momentum. His circle was growing. Before most of the cohort had finished chewing, he'd built himself an audience.

  SMILE FREQUENCY: CALCULATED.

  A woman dropped onto the bench to Coin's right. Fast and certain, no wasted motion. Dark braids, tanned skin. She set her tray down and picked up her spoon.

  Coin had given the last one spoon technique and digestive guidance. Both solid contributions. Time to expand the portfolio.

  "You'll want to pace yourself on the stew," Coin said. "It's heavy. Root vegetables, dense broth. If you eat too fast you'll feel it in the gut by the time afternoon training starts. Coin recommends alternating — two bites of stew, one bite of bread, then a sip of water. It keeps the digestion moving and prevents the post-meal crash."

  She had the spoon in her mouth when Coin started talking. It stayed there through the first few sentences. By the last, her eyes had moved to Coin with the fixed quality of someone waiting for the talking to stop so the eating could resume.

  "The bread is better if you tear it instead of biting. Smaller pieces, more surface area for the broth to absorb. You get the flavor integration without the jaw fatigue."

  She took the spoon out of her mouth. Set it down. Picked up her tray.

  "Coin can also recommend—"

  She was already gone. Across the hall, weaving between the packed benches, heading for the far table where a cluster of women had gathered near the end. She set her tray down among them and leaned in. Said something. The group looked back at Coin's table. At Coin.

  They laughed.

  Good. The advice was spreading. Coin had planted a seed with one person and she'd carried it to a group, and now they were engaged. A couple of them glanced at Coin again, heads tilted together, still grinning. One covered her mouth with her hand. The woman who'd moved was talking with her hands, gesturing, and whatever she was describing got another round.

  SEEDS: CROSS-POLLINATING.

  A trainee sat down in the spot the woman had vacated. He had a roll of bread in one hand and was already eating it dry before he got his tray arranged.

  Every seat Coin touched produced a candidate. The framework was delivering results faster than projected.

  "You're going to want liquid with that," Coin said. "Dry bread on its own compacts in the throat. The body works harder to break it down without moisture, and you're already dehydrated from this morning's training. Grab your water first. Hydrate, then eat. The order matters."

  The trainee chewed his bread. Looked at Coin. Kept chewing. His jaw worked in slow circles, deliberate, maintaining eye contact the entire time. He swallowed. Took another bite. Same speed. Same eye contact. Chewed the whole thing without breaking his gaze, swallowed, and washed it down with a long pull of water.

  Then he picked up his tray, pivoted on the bench, and swung his legs over to the other side so his back was to Coin. Started eating facing the opposite direction.

  ENGAGEMENT: UNCONVENTIONAL.

  NOTE: LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL.

  The mess hall had found its full voice. Every bench was taken. Elbows competed for space along the table edges. The serving line had thinned out to stragglers and seconds-seekers. Conversations braided together into a wall of sound that individual voices punched through and fell back into.

  The duelist's circle had grown. He was telling a story about something that had happened at the screening, and the group was leaning in.

  Near the wall at the far end of the hall, a trainee sat alone. Blonde hair pulled back, green cloak still on despite the warmth of the room. Eyes up, moving. Coin's attention passed over her and moved on.

  Red-beard had wedged himself into a spot that wasn't quite big enough and was on his latest bowl. The people on either side of him had adjusted to accommodate his elbows, leaning away at matching angles, a shared retreat.

  Groups were forming in real time. The duelist and his circle. The women at the far table, still glancing over occasionally, still laughing. A cluster of heavier-built trainees who'd gravitated together by body type or temperament or both. Red-beard and his reluctant neighbors.

  The seats on either side of Coin were empty. The bench across was occupied by people facing each other, their conversation flowing over the gap where Coin sat.

  The lamp overhead caught Coin's surface and threw copper across the wood. The bread on Coin's tray sat where the mess hall staff had put it.

  BONDS: FORMING.

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