The low bronze ring of Mother Renn’s gong didn’t fade into the open timber rafters so much as sink directly into the blue river-stone paving of the pit. Above the southern podium, the first drop of red-dyed water fell from the glass nozzle into the lower basin with a soft, distinct plink. Before the shaking of the gong reached the western drainage gutter, Daro Kesh moved. He didn’t shout, and he didn’t drop into the wide, showy lunges favored by charter examinees trying to impress an upper gallery. His iron-mounted sword rose two inches from his hip in a compact, level line. His consolidated Bronze breath settled along the unpolished flat of the steel like a layer of dark river slate.
“One,” Mother Renn’s tally clerk called from the southern podium, his brass metal pen already clicking into the first notch of the boxwood stick.
Seyun didn’t step backward. To yield the center of the thirty-foot chalk circle on the first breath would surrender the ten-foot iron chain and the suspended brass lantern-cage before the second drop of red water had gathered on the glass tip. Instead, he sank half an inch into the Returning Step. That let his straw sandals find the gritty dry seam between the worn eastern flat stone slabs and the smooth, hollow-polished center stones. His Flame-stage breath surged from his lower spirit vein into the small, dense channels of his forearms. He wrapped the pale linen of Mina’s bandages and the grey sheen of Ilyra’s…
