“We’ll start with stretches.” She pulled him into the room.
“She knows my name!” Pasco whispered as he followed her.
The practice room was large and bare, paneled in golden wood and lit by large windows. The shutters were open, admitting a breeze. Benches were arranged around the walls. Sandry took a seat on one. Oama sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, while Kwaben leaned against the wall. Yazmín was giving instructions to three young people. When she finished, they nodded and trotted out. The flute player who had been in the corner went with them.
“Sit,” Yazmín ordered Pasco. She pointed to the floor. Pasco obeyed. “Spread your legs as wide as you can. Wider. Here.” She sat opposite him and stretched her own legs out until the balls of her feet pressed against the insides of Pasco’s legs just above his knees. “Give me your hands,” she ordered; Pasco did.
She clasped him by the wrists and pulled him steadily forward, forcing his legs open wider. Finally he yelped. “Oh, you baby,” chided Yazmín. “Look at you, not even a decent spread, and you’re whimpering. Now hold that position.”
“I think I’m stuck in it,” Pasco squeaked as Yazmín eased back from him.
“Soon you’ll be able to do this,” she said, and swept her legs out farther still, until they formed a straight line with her body.
Pasco gulped.
Sandry heard a smothered noise from Oama, and looked down at her. The guard was chuckling.
“You’ll also learn to do this.” Keeping her legs apart, Yazmín lowered her body until she was facedown on the floor, her arms extended before her. “Now you try.”
Pasco leaned forward gingerly, stretching out his arms. He rested his elbows on the floor.
Yazmín stood. She walked around behind Pasco. “Does that hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Well, it should,” she informed him, and thrust down on his back with her palms.
Pasco dipped several inches closer to the floor with a whimper. Without taking the pressure from his back, Yazmín leaned down and yelled, “You want to dance?
Work for it!” She took her hands away. “Sit up.” He obeyed. She thrust him down again. “Dip. Sit up. Dip. Admire the sanding we did on this floor. It’s splinter-free. Nice wood grain, don’t you think? Sit up. Dip. I want you doing these exercises at home. If you don’t, believe me, I’ll know. That’s enough for nowten of these stretches at night. Get up.”
Pasco winced as he pulled his legs together. “That hurt?
“Good,” Yazmín said heartlessly. “Stand up. Touch your toesdon’t bend your knees. Touch ‘em, boy!”
She worked him for an hour, forcing him to bend his body in a number of painful ways. When a girl in pink ran in demanding that Yazmín come to settle an argument, Yazmín gave Pasco a corked flask and a drying cloth. “Breathe,” she ordered, and left with the girl.
Pasco staggered over to Sandry. “She’s a monster,” he gasped. He worked the cork out of the flask and drank greedily. “A pretty, tiny, squeaky-voiced monster with muscles like a smith’s.”
Yazmín soon returned, a fiddler in tow. “Now, let’s see you dance,” she told Pasco. He glared at her, then lurched to the center of the floor.
Sandry got up. “Wait,” she said. “Any dancing, he’s got to be warded. We don’t want what he does getting loose.” She sent Kwaben and Oama to watch the door as the fiddler sat in the corner. Sandry created a circle big enough that Pasco and Yazmín could stay inside without having to worry about breaking the protection on the room.
For the next hour they reviewed common dances, ones Sandry had watched all her life without knowing that they had names or meanings. One dance was called “Dodging the Provost,” another, “Bird in the Hand,” a third, “Gathering Flowers.” In that one the dancer skipped in a ring, plucking imaginary flowers from the air. Sandry thought Pasco might use that gesture to pull his runaway power back into himself. She wrote the idea down in the small book she now carried for just such thoughts.
While the boy danced, Yazmín had her eye on him, as well as her hands. She hovered, straightening his back, forcing an arm into a more graceful curve, putting more thrust into his spins. “Get your feet up!” she yelled. “It’s a skip, not a shuffle. Show me air under your toes!”
When the Guildhall clock struck the noon hour, Yazmín called a halt. Pasco’s hair and shirt were soaked in sweat. I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”
“That’s what being a dancer is.” Yazmin’s dark eyes were kind and firm. “For you it’s twice a problem. It isn’t just what you do to survive, it’s your power. And look at you. You’re a fresh youngster, not an old lady like me, but,” She twirled seven times on the ball of one foot, lowered herself into a split, then raised herself again without once bending her knees. She leaned back until she could put her weight on her palms, raised her body into a handstand, then a split, then let her weight fall until she stood again. “I can do all that,” she continued, breathing a little hard, “after chasing my lot all morning and getting you to stretch a bit.”
Sandry took up her warding, trying not to smile. It really was too bad Yazmín wasn’t a mage. If she had been, Sandry would have turned Pasco over to her without a qualm.