An hour before sunrise, the stone bell in the middle court of White Heron Hall sounded three slow, unrushed strokes through the freezing mist. Seyun was already awake and dressed by the barred door of his corner room in the Guest Pavilion. All through the fourth and fifth watches of the night, after laundry attendant Jesh had slipped back down the service stair with her brother Tov’s woodblock-printed letter tucked safely inside her bodice, Seyun had sat on the cedar floor beam with his Account Book open on his knee, copying every detail of her testimony. The seven missing White Heron recruits, the four boys from Birch Hollow, the heated bronze pulse-rod used by the Aperture Court’s circuit physician. The half-moon nick on the left frame of the printing plate.
Before closing his ledger, he had also unwound the linen bandages from both of his palms over the cold iron basin, inspecting the red, granulating ridges of skin where the burning oak beam of the Oran wrestling lodge had seared his flesh. Mina’s marsh-reed ash healing wrap had kept the blisters from weeping. Even so, flexing his fingers too rapidly still sent a tight, dry pull across the center of each palm. He re-bound the strips carefully around his thumbs and wrists. That left his fingertips free enough to feel stone and iron. Then he slid the three copper pulse needles into their oiled leather case inside his coat.
