Page 37 of Dustwalker

Lara combed her fingers through her hair, taming the wayward strands and wincing as she tugged at the tangles, stopping only after she’d managed to make it look somewhat presentable.

Her clothing was still damp, so she left it hanging on the curtain rod. Ronin’s shirt would have to do for a while longer.

She slipped into the hallway and crept downstairs.

Ronin was sitting at the table in the main room, tools spread out before him, with her boot in one hand. Her boot, which had been cleaned of mud.

Her brow furrowed. Where had she left her boots last night? They were her most valuable possession, the first thing she put on every morning, and she always kept them close to her pallet. But today, she hadn’t even looked for them. Was she already going soft?

“What are you doing?” Lara asked as she reached the bottom step.

“Maintaining your gear.” He didn’t look up from the needle he was pulling through the sole of her boot.

“Maintaining my… Oh. Um, thanks.”

“Care for them properly, and things like this won’t happen.”

Lara clutched the banister as she narrowed her eyes. “It’s not like people go around teaching us how to fix boots and all that.”

“At some point”—the needle came back around, drawn through the thick sole as easily as if it were paper—“there was a pair of these that were the first. Nobody told their owner how to take care of them. That person had to learn on their own.”

“I don’t need you already busting my—” She snapped her mouth shut and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. “Look, I don’t want to fight again, okay?”

When Lara opened her eyes, he was looking at her. She couldn’t quite read his expression, but there seemed to be a littleI wasn’t the one fightingin it, and that sent a rush of irritation through her that she quickly quelled.

“Sleep all right?” Ronin asked, looking back at the boot. His hands continued their sure movements, each stitch identical to the last.

“I slept late. Didn’t you say you were leaving today?”

“You didn’t seem too keen on me going. Figured you’d be more comfortable if you weren’t alone when you woke up. I know it can take some time to get acclimated to a new environment.”

“That was…thoughtful of you.” Lara didn’t know what to make of this. She was still reeling from his apology the night before, and now he was taking her feelings into account? “Does it take you time to get used to new places?”

Ronin shifted the boot to a different angle. She was amazed at how nimble and precise his metal fingers were.

He again pressed the needle through the sole. “Yes. Every place has its own leaders, its own rules. Scrap that’s valuable in one town is worthless in another. And it’s constantly changing. It always takes time to learn all that again.”

Reluctantly, Lara stepped off the soft flooring of the stairs and onto the cold maybe-wood of the main room. “I’m not even strong enough to do what you’re doing now.”

“It’s not about how much strength you have, but knowing how much to use.” He tied off and cut the thick thread, placed the boot on the table, and turned in the chair to face her.

“What?” Maybe she should’ve cut him some slack for not understanding her emotions—she couldn’t understand what he was talking about half the time.

“The application of strength is more important than the amount of it. It’s just as easy to use too much as it is to use too little, and that often leads to unintended consequences.” He dipped a hand into his pocket and removed a small piece of plastic with little metal dots and lines on it. “Pinch this between your fingers.”

She arched a skeptical brow at him as she took it, edges between pointer finger and thumb, and pinched. It was harder than it looked. “Still not getting it.”

“Squeeze. Hard as you can.”

Lara did as he said. The plastic didn’t buckle at all. Instead, it dug painfully into her fingertips. When he took it back from her, she was all too happy to be rid of it; her fingers throbbed and there were deep indents in her skin.

“Don’t see what that proves,” she said, rubbing the sting away.

Ronin grasped the plastic the same way she had, holding it up where she could see. Without any apparent effort, his finger and thumb came together, snapping the plastic in half.

She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a hip. “Yeah, you’re stronger than me. Already knew that, didn’t we?”

“That’s not the point, Lara. You must exert a conscious effort to apply allyour strength. I must do the same to apply only a small portion of it. That necessitates significant processing resources being constantly devoted to my sensory inputs. It can be just as difficult for me notto break something as it is for you to break it.”