The Hammer Unfalls

Glim lay in the residual warmth of his bedroll and glanced at the tiny, but cheerful, fire Ryn had lit in the fireplace. She set their mugs near a couple of hot coals. When curls of steam rose from the water inside, she emptied a packet of powder into each and carried them to the table.

Rising to join her, Glim walked over to the table and took a seat. Glim tried the concoction and nearly gagged. It tasted like dirt.

Ryn laughed. “It will help you with the soreness. And sharpen your mind a bit as a bonus.”

As they ate breakfast, Glim’s tongue started to feel numb. He moved his mouth around, trying to encourage some feeling to return.

“I see it’s working,” Ryn said with a grin.

Glim’s tongue felt tingly, but his mind clearer. His muscles had already ceased their dull throbbing.

“Enough fun for now,” she said. “Time to get back to your training. Let’s talk about secrecy. Or in your case, complete lack thereof.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean everything. You foreshadow everything. Where you’ll go next. When you’re confused, or irritated.” She looked at him with a mocking expression and lowered her voice. “You’re as easy to read as a children’s picture scroll.”

Her tone sounded shaming. Glim felt his face flush. He felt foolish.

“See? Just now. That’s a perfect example. You have no reason to feel ashamed. Yet I was able to provoke you into being defensive just by altering my voice and raising my eyebrows a little.” She lowered her voice again, and laced her words with disdain. “You fell for it so easily.”

Glim felt foolish again, and his face reddened more.

“And once again.” She patted him on the knee. “Don’t feel bad, Glim. I am manipulating you. To provoke a reaction. It takes time and practice to defend against such tactics. But it happens every day. People use emotional influence to get their way.”

“What does this have to do with plying?” Glim asked.

“Plying obscured requires you to disguise your intentions. Facial expressions. Tone of voice, and movements. A thousand cues you must learn to suppress, divert, or lead others into misinterpreting.”

“A thousand? How will I ever learn all of that?”

“You probably won’t. Especially with the forthright way you’ve been raised. A soldier’s honor and that sort of thing.” Ryn’s eyes flickered, but Glim could not tell from what. “But the good news is, you don’t have to learn it all. Think of obfuscation like a tree—”

“—obb-fuh what?”

“—obfuscation. It’s a branch of plying obscured. One of the most basic, along with observation.”

“I’m already lost,” Glim groaned.

“Let’s back up a bit. To hide your intent, what three things do you need to consider?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re close. Or should I say, far. Having an idea, or intent, is the first. You can’t hide an intention you don’t have.”

“I see,” Glim said thoughtfully. “What else?”

“Immediately upon forming your intention, you need to consider two things. One is, what cues do you naturally give away that will reveal your intent? And once you have those two figured out, you need to simultaneously determine how to mask that intent.”

“All at the same time?”

“Plying obscured is at least thrice as difficult as plying transparent. When you’re plying transparent, you have fewer things to juggle. You have a unified intent. It’s much more straightforward.”

Glim chewed on his own lip. Partially because it had become a bit numb, and it was mildly amusing to poke at it. But also, because his mind was trying to put it all into place.

“Glim, this is exactly what I was telling you yesterday. You’re a do-er. You don’t learn by pondering things. Instead of studying the theory, let’s do some examples. Do you want to know what I put in our drinks this morning?”

Glim looked at his cup, then the fire, then at Ryn’s backpack.

“Your eyes have just told me everything. You looked at the cup first, which gave me a hint that you were thinking about the drink. You looked at the fire, which indicated your memory kicking in of me mixing it. Then you looked at me and tried to figure out where I’d pulled the powder from.”

Glim nodded at her accurate guesses.

“Now let’s say I also had other powders that I might use on you. Which I do. So you become wary. Now that I’ve detected your curiosity, I’ll be double careful to hide where I keep them. So assuming your intent is to learn more of my apothecary supplies, but without tipping me off, what would you do differently?”

“Umm, not look at you?’

Ryn chuckled. “That’s not going to tell you much.”

“I could ask about something else and hope you’ll tell me?’

“That’s quite advanced. You’ll probably give away more than you get from me.”

“I could distract you?”

“That’s an excellent idea. You could, say, palm a spider, and when you’re walking next to me, brush it off where you suspect the pouch is. Then drop the spider where I can see it. Or you could offer to do the dishes, and when you return, put my cup away in my pack and take a look inside. When you’re trying to go forward, walk sideways.”

“Huh?”

“Get in the habit of awareness. Being mindful of what cues you’re giving off. Plying obscured begins with mindfulness. Observation, in particular.”

“You said there are a thousand cues!”

“Thousands, probably. But as I started to say before, obfuscation is like a tree. If you’re trying to hide which twig you’re planning to climb to, you don’t have to start with all the fiddly little paths you might take at the branch tips. Start by learning the trunk, and the bigger branches. If you cut those off, it gives others much less information to pursue.”

“You want me to cut a tree? Father already makes me do that.”

“Not really. I want you to mentally erase or hide the path you intend to climb. Starting by hiding the big stuff. If people can’t see the tree trunk or the main branches you take, they can’t predict your route. Don’t look at where you intend to go. Don’t let others see your mind working on it. Don’t run towards it like a hinterjack chasing down prey. Be oblique.” Seeing his confused look, she hastened to clarify. “Oblique means to take a diagonal path. Slant away and approach from a different angle. A hidden one.”

“Doesn’t that take longer?”

“It can. Especially at first when you’re still learning the basics. Plying obscured takes more planning and effort. Once you know the patterns, you can hide your goal, or even misdirect.”

Glim groaned. More patterns. “I don’t get it.”

“Think of a merchant. Or a merchant’s daughter,” she said with a smirk. Glim blushed.

“See, there you go again. Now I know Gyda isn’t the only one interested. Shame and embarrassment are the hardest to hide. We’ll get to that in a bit. Now back to the merchant. When a merchant enters a trade, do they say something like ‘what I want the most is that bolt of silk fabric?’ Or do they act interested in other things so as not to give the other trader information that would raise the price?”

“They hide it, I guess. I don’t know much about trading.”

“Then let me be more direct. You must control your eye movements. Your breath. The tension in your shoulders. You must take control of the clues your body and thoughts are revealing. You can only do that by observing yourself and others.”

“Observing what?’

“Looking for when others are distracted or focused. Gauging their mood. Seeing what openings you have to exploit.”

“Exploit? You mean manipulating people?”

“Yes. That brings us to harmonic vs disharmonic. Plying obscured with the intent of disharmony is a shadowy path. Observing others to defend yourself is one thing. Doing so to take advantage of them is a murkier ethical question. One you are susceptible to.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want the approval of others. So you are vulnerable to them. Earning approval is hard. Misleading people, in the short term at least, is easier. Now let’s get into the details. What do you know about emotions?”

“Master Willow taught me some things.” Glim told Ryn about his understanding of the ten emotions. With each one, she described cues to look for to sense emotions in others, and what evidence he would be giving off with each.

“Now then, Glim,” she said in the tone he’d come to learn adults used when it was time to show off his understanding, “What does it mean when someone smiles?”

“They’re happy?”

“Usually that is true. But there are two other possibilities. The first one is anger. Angry people sometimes smile as a way of suppressing it, or trying to show others they aren’t angry. Anger motivates people to fight. Showing the world you are angry and about to start a fight gives your opponent time to adjust. So a smile can be a cue of anger.”

“What’s the other one?”

“Sadness. Especially when one is about to cry. It can seem like laughter at first.”

Glim sighed.

“I can tell you’re finished with this for now,” Ryn said. “Let me leave you with one final thought to ponder. Shame, embarrassment, and anger are hard to hide. It will take you years to learn how. So you should start practicing now. Also, think of deflections to minimize the information you give off. Confidence. A genuine laugh. Or a misleading alternate explanation. Going on the offensive. Think of strategies. The more you prepare in advance, the easier it is in the moment.”

Ryn rose and stretched. “Feel like having lunch?’

“No, I want to keep going,” Glim said wryly.

“Nice try,” Ryn said with a laugh. “It’s a start though.”