The frost on the porch steps crunched softly beneath Seyun’s boots. He walked down into the moonlit turnip lane. Three paces from the stone well-curb, Daro Kesh stood with the point of his live Bronze sword resting on the toe of his boot. His breath rose in white plumes into the freezing air. Meanwhile, his left thumb massaged the tight, knotted groove between the brachioradialis and the pronator tendon on the inside of his right elbow.
Five days earlier in Oran, before the hundred-breath contest in the wrestling lodge, Seyun had withheld the full clockwork details of how the Answering Spirit vein registered a rival’s injury or death. Fearing that if he explained every clause upfront, an independent swordsman would refuse to test him. The beam fell and Ilyra confronted him over the omission. Then, Seyun had sworn to both of his rivals that he would never again hide a signal or dress a spirit vein reaction up as his own cleverness.
So he didn’t pretend that he had merely heard Daro’s boots through the window shutter, nor did he play the omniscient physician diagnosing a cramp from the shadows. Stopping three paces away at the edge of the cabbage row, Seyun lifted his braced left hand and tapped the wool of his coat directly over his right collarbone.
