The first circuit took fourteen minutes to climb from Seyun’s solar nerve web through the uninjured left between-rib channels, cross the bridge of his seventh neck vertebra at the base of his neck, and go down through both upper-arm spirit veins to the center of his lime-cracked palms.
Every inch of the way felt as if a thread of molten copper were being drawn through a needle-eye too small for its gauge.
Because the seventh-dawn echo carried the dense, compacted quality of Ilyra’s Early Bronze spear-wake, even one-sixth of its volume was heavier and hotter than any ordinary Late Coal breath. Yet because Mina had parcelled the volume to match the exact elastic capacity of his left-side collaterals—and because five days of hauling river-slates and turning in the alley had already taught his between-rib muscles how to yield without stiffening—the living walls of his left channels stretched without tearing.
When the first ribbon of amber heat reached the Laogong sky-slits in the center of his cupped palms and curved smoothly back down his inner forearms toward his dantian to complete the first loop, Mina’s eyes were fixed on the brass sand-glass on the chimney-ledge.
The last grain of quartz sand fell. Then, she tapped the collar needle back down two Fen, sealing the pool gate cleanly, and right away scooped a fresh ribbon of moss-cold reed-root paste across his chest bone.
