Simon began training two days after Starlight. He left shortly after sunrise and returned in the middle of the afternoon exhausted, dirty and extremely pleased with himself.
He had barely entered the house before he started talking.
"Master Theodere wasn't even there today. Mr. Hall said he had business somewhere outside the village, so Victor led most of our training. We spent half the morning running, and then he made us stretch until Thomas said his legs were going to fall off."
Joe looked up from where he was sitting. "Who's Victor?"
"One of the older students. He's thirteen, but he's already been training for years, so Mr. Hall lets him lead beginners sometimes. He's stronger than almost everyone in our group."
"He's teaching you martial arts?"
"Foundations," Simon corrected immediately. "Running, stretching, standing, breathing and things like that. Victor says everyone wants to learn the impressive parts first, but if your foundation is bad, you'll stay bad no matter what you learn later."
Joe nodded.
Simon narrowed his eyes. "What?"
"Nothing."
"You were going to say something."
"I wasn't."
"You looked like you were."
Joe decided not to argue. Simon had spent one day inside the Talent Hall and had already acquired the tone of someone explaining a profession.
Over the following weeks, Joe gradually understood the structure better.
Mr. Hall managed most of Talent Hall's daily operation. He taught reading, numbers, rules and basic martial theory while keeping track of the different training groups. Older trainees handled much of the physical repetition, leading younger students through running, stretching, conditioning and stance practice.
The system made practical sense. There was no reason for an experienced martial artist to spend every morning showing seven-year-olds how to place their feet when an older trainee could do the same thing.
Theodere's role was different.
He appeared at the Hall roughly once a week when he was in Green Hollow, although sometimes several weeks passed without anyone seeing him. Even when he came, he rarely spent the entire day teaching children. He inspected training, corrected important mistakes, examined students who were approaching a new stage and occasionally demonstrated something when Hall or one of the senior trainees needed his judgment.
Actual personal instruction from him was much rarer.
Simon still treated every appearance as an important event.
The evening before Theodere was expected, he practiced more carefully, checked his writing board twice and complained if anyone distracted him.
Lily encouraged it.
"Your shirt is filthy."
"I trained in it."
"Then wash it."
"I'm going to make it dirty again tomorrow."
Lily looked at him.
Simon picked up the shirt. "I'll wash it."
Joe watched from the side.
Simon could argue with Pam for half an hour and with Joe for as long as both remained interested. Lily required considerably less time.
Her attention toward Simon had increased noticeably since Starlight. She reminded him about lessons, kept track of the days Theodere might appear and asked what Hall had said whenever Simon returned later than usual.
Mike asked too, although usually with considerably more optimism and less interrogation.
"Anything new today?"
"We practiced the first stance for almost an hour."
"Good."
"My legs hurt."
"That means it worked."
Joe was not convinced that followed.
The family's reaction made more sense once he understood Theodere's position.
Theodere was not simply Green Hollow's strongest resident. He was an older martial artist, somewhere around fifty, and one of the few recognized martial artists even after counting several surrounding villages. He had trained people in the region for decades and possessed enough reputation that villagers who rarely agreed on anything treated his ability as settled fact.
People travelled to Green Hollow specifically to speak with him. Hunters occasionally consulted him before entering the deeper parts of the northern woods, while messengers from Blackwood sometimes arrived asking for him by name.
Green Hollow possessed a proper Talent Hall largely because Theodere lived there.
Most nearby villages had nothing comparable.
His time was therefore not spent teaching children how to stretch. Older students handled what they could, Mr. Hall handled most of what they could not, and Theodere dealt with the parts that required an actual martial artist.
Simon also began learning to read.
That immediately made his training useful to Joe.
One evening, Simon sat near the doorway drawing characters onto a small wooden board with charcoal. He wrote one, stared at it, erased half the strokes and tried again.
Joe had been watching from nearby.
"Mountain."
Simon stopped. "What?"
"That character."
Simon looked at the board and then back at him. "How do you know that?"
"You said it yesterday."
"Oh."
Simon seemed willing to accept that explanation until Joe pointed toward another character.
"That one's man."
Simon stared again. "I only showed you that once."
"Twice."
"That's still not many times."
Joe shrugged.
Simon studied him for another moment before drawing a new character with considerably more care.
"This one is river."
Joe looked at the strokes and committed them to memory.
The writing system was completely different from English, but that did not matter much. Languages could be learned, and unlike spoken language, which he had absorbed naturally during infancy, written language was finally something he could study deliberately.
The greater problem was access.
Simon owned no books.
The Talent Hall did.
Mr. Hall copied lessons onto larger boards while students practiced characters on smaller wooden boards using charcoal or water. Simon had seen actual books inside the Hall, but most remained stored away and students were not permitted to carry them home.
That alone told Joe how valuable they were.
Martial texts were guarded even more carefully.
Joe discovered that distinction one afternoon when Simon practiced behind the house.
Simon planted his feet, lowered his body and positioned his arms in a posture Joe had never seen him use before. He remained there for several breaths before noticing Joe standing near the doorway.
Simon immediately straightened.
"Don't copy that."
Joe had not moved. "Why?"
"Because you're not allowed to."
"It's standing."
"It's not just standing. There's a breathing pattern too, and Mr. Hall said we aren't supposed to show the foundation to people outside the Hall."
Joe looked at him more carefully.
Simon lowered his voice, suddenly enjoying the fact that he knew something important.
"We signed an inheritance contract before training started. Father signed because I'm still a child, but I had to agree too. Mr. Hall asked me whether I understood that I wasn't allowed to teach the inheritance."
That caught Joe's attention.
"What kind of contract?"
"A martial inheritance contract."
"That doesn't explain anything."
"It explains enough."
"No, it doesn't."
Simon frowned, then glanced toward the house before holding out the inside of his wrist.
A faint dark mark sat beneath the skin.
Joe had noticed it before but assumed it was ink or some kind of stain. Up close, the mark looked more deliberate: several thin connected lines curved into a small circular pattern.
"It appeared after we agreed," Simon said. "Father signed, I said I accepted, and then the writing on the contract lit up. This showed up afterward."
Joe leaned slightly closer.
"Does it wash off?"
Simon gave him a look. "Do you think I haven't tried?"
That answered the question.
"What does it do?"
"Mr. Hall said it records whether we break the inheritance rules."
"How?"
Simon shrugged. "How should I know? I signed it. I didn't make it."
That was reasonable.
"What counts as breaking the rules?"
"We can't teach the restricted parts of the inheritance to outsiders. Stances, breathing methods, forms and anything Hall specifically says belongs to Master Theodere. Some ordinary exercises aren't restricted, but we're supposed to ask if we aren't sure."
Joe glanced toward the place where Simon had been standing.
"So that stance is restricted."
"Obviously. That's why I stopped when I saw you."
There was more pride than irritation in Simon's voice. He was not only protecting the inheritance; he liked being one of the people who possessed something Joe did not.
Joe could hardly blame him.
For most of their lives, Joe had been the younger brother quietly remembering things Simon forgot. The Talent Hall gave Simon an entire world where the positions were reversed.
"What happens if someone teaches it anyway?"
Simon sat back down beside his writing board.
"Martin did."
"Who's Martin?"
"Older student. Eleven, I think. His younger brother kept bothering him, so Martin showed him part of the first stance."
"And?"
"Mr. Hall found out."
"How?"
Simon looked at Joe as if he had deliberately returned to the annoying part of the conversation.
"The contract."
Joe waited.
Simon sighed. "I don't know exactly. Mr. Hall said the mark recorded the violation. Martin had to leave training for a month, and everyone said a second offense would go to Master Theodere personally."
"Did the mark change?"
"I didn't stare at his wrist."
"You stare at everyone else's training."
"That's different."
Joe let that pass.
Something happened when Simon accepted the contract. A mark had appeared beneath his skin, and the people responsible for the Hall apparently believed it could detect violations of specific rules.
The adults around Simon accepted this as normal enough that Mike had barely mentioned it afterward.
Joe did not.
In his previous life, contracts worked because institutions enforced them. A document could record an agreement, but the paper itself did not know whether someone had broken it.
Apparently, this one did something more.
Joe had nowhere near enough information to understand how.
That did not make the observation less important.
He abandoned any thought of asking Simon to secretly teach him the stance. Simon might have enjoyed showing off, but risking his place in the Hall for Joe's curiosity would have been stupid.
Joe would have his own chance if he qualified later.
Until then, literacy was safer.
Over the following months, Simon continued bringing characters home from the Hall, usually mixed with long explanations about whatever had happened during training.
Some evenings he complained about Victor.
Other evenings Victor was apparently the greatest senior student in Green Hollow.
The difference usually depended on whether Victor had praised or corrected him that day.
"Victor said my stance was better than Thomas's today," Simon announced one evening.
Pam was sorting dried herbs nearby.
"You've told us about Thomas."
"He has trained longer than me."
"You've told us that too."
"That's why it's important."
Pam sighed. "If Thomas ever comes here, I'm going to ask whether he talks about you this much."
Simon frowned.
"He probably does."
Joe doubted that.
Pam and Simon had begun developing an interesting relationship. Pam liked stories almost as much as Simon did, but neither particularly enjoyed listening when the other had possession of the conversation.
Mike usually escaped outside.
Lily almost always sided with Simon.
"Let him talk. He's telling us what happens at the Hall."
Pam looked at her. "He told us the same thing during breakfast."
"It changed."
Simon nodded immediately. "There were more details."
"There are always more details with you."
Simon looked offended. Pam returned to her herbs, apparently satisfied.
Joe listened anyway.
Simon exaggerated, boasted and frequently confused rumor with fact, but underneath all that noise was information.
The Talent Hall had rules.
It had levels of knowledge.
Some things were public enough for senior students to teach beginners, while other things were protected by an inheritance contract that behaved in ways Joe could not explain.
There were books he could not access, martial methods he could not yet learn and an entire system beyond the village's ordinary farming life.
For the first time since recovering his past-life memories, Joe had found something in this world that did not fit comfortably inside anything he already understood.
That made Talent Hall considerably more interesting.