Six of them. Rama counted before he'd finished turning — six spear-points and one drawn short blade, arranged in a ring too tight for any of them to miss if this went wrong, and not one soldier standing where another's throw would catch him in the back.
That discipline told him something before a single word did.
He could kill all six before the nearest spear cleared its own length. The calculation ran itself without asking permission — distance, angle, the half-second a trained body needed to close the gap on a man holding a weapon rather than already swinging it. Seven years hadn't touched that part of him at all. It sat there, ready, the way it always had, indifferent to how much of his life had moved on from needing it.
He didn't move.
"Hands," Sekar breathed, barely shaping the word. "Empty. Now."
