They didn’t use an ordinary pair of handcuffs on Ivara Quill. There was nothing on her left side to lock an iron ring around except the smooth, rounded stump of her upper arm bone, neatly pinned beneath the coarse wool of her jacket.
Instead, the two Survey Office guards ran five turns of three-quarter-inch tarred hemp lashing around her chest, binding her mangled right arm tight against her ribs. The rope passed directly over her swollen, out-of-joint right wrist. It pressed the bruised and torn wrist bones against her breastbone with every turn. The pain was a hot, throbbing brand that made her vision swim in gray circles. But she kept her teeth clenched into the torn flesh of her lip. She refused to give Corve the satisfaction of a groan.
The chest lashing was knotted with two half-hitches. Then, Corve snapped a single heavy iron manacle around her right wrist. She locked the swivel link to a three-foot length of trace-chain that he held in his gloved fist like a cattle lead.
“Walk, land-mapper,” Corve muttered, his eyes avoiding her face. “Keep your boots on the crown of the road. If you stumble, the chain pulls on the wrist.”
