For forty-nine breaths, Daro Kesh had treated Seyun and the iron chain as the two halves of a single problem inside the thirty-foot chalk circle. The fiftieth drop of red water gathered at the glass tip. Then, the consolidated Bronze master made a decision that belonged not to a tournament duelist, but to a veteran who had fought river raiders in burning timber stockades.
If a lighter opponent uses a ten-foot swinging weight and a sloped floor to keep a suspended prize moving out of reach, you don’t spend the second half of your hundred breaths chasing the swinging weight. You drop the beam from which it hangs.
“Fifty!” the tally clerk shouted, his boxwood knife biting deep into the wide middle notch of the stick.
Daro didn’t lunge at the brass lantern-cage as it swung back from the northeast side. He didn’t thrust at Seyun’s raw, soot-blackened hands. Instead, he pivoted ninety degrees on his dry eastern heel and took two long, ground-eating strides straight toward the northeast outer edge of the chalked circle. There, the heavy upright cedar post stood socketed into the stone floor to carry the balance weight pulley wheel and the eastern end of the overhead crossbeam.
