“Eighty-three,” the tally clerk called out, his voice barely above a whisper in the stillness of the roofless northeast corner as the eighty-third drop of red water struck the lower glass basin.
In the eastern gallery box, Examiner Vael let out a harsh, disgusted breath and slapped his closed wax tablet against the cedar rail, already turning toward his three junior clerks to instruct them on how to write up Daro Kesh’s technical forfeiture. On the lower western bench, Ilyra stood beside the aisle where Mina was wrapping a quick figure-eight bandage around the barrel-maker’s boy’s bruised ankle. Ilyra’s dark eyes were fixed entirely on Seyun’s face.
She knew him well enough now—after the ferry deck at Ash Reed, the marsh raised stone road. The dressing nook—to know what he was weighing before his lips moved.
Seyun looked down for half a second at the grey limestone tablet gleaming dimly behind the bent brass bars at his feet. That stone was the other half of Master Uren’s legacy. It contained the internal Balance breathing charts designed to stabilize the returning echo, the very diagrams he had risked his last silver and the skin of both hands to keep out of Osen Tal’s registry vaults. All he had to do was leave his right straw sandal where it was for seventeen more breaths. Meanwhile, the last seventeen drops of red water slipped through Mother Renn’s nozzle. Nobody in the tiered arena—not even the partisan ironworkers from the North Ward—could claim he…
