At the start of the eighteenth breath, Daro Kesh’s left index finger was four inches from the brass hasp, and eighty percent of his forward weight was committed to the dry eastern flat stone slab beneath his lead boot. His sword flat was pressing Seyun’s right forearm down against his belt. Because of that, a conventional defender would have pushed upward against the blade or grabbed at Daro’s reaching wrist. Both of which Daro’s consolidated Bronze shoulder was already braced to crush.
Seyun stopped pushing upward against the steel.
Instead, he dropped his knees three inches into a sudden, slack-hipped crouch that let Daro’s downward blade pressure push him down rather than back. His head ducked beneath the line of Daro’s reaching left elbow. Then, Seyun whipped his free left hand—palm raw, linen stained with rib blood and grey reed ash—straight upward past his own ear. He didn’t strike Daro’s arm. His fingertips struck the heavy iron swivel ring six inches above the top of the brass lantern-cage, releasing a compact, sharp pulse of Flame breath directly into the cold iron link.
Clink.
The sound was small compared to the heavy concussions of the sword, barely louder than a cooper’s rivet hammer. Yet the twenty-eight-pound cage hung at the bottom of a ten-foot chain, and Daro’s own crash with Seyun on the fourteenth breath had already loosened its dead hang. Struck squarely at the lower swivel while its mass was suspended, the brass box didn’t merely wobble. It kicked outward…
