Seyun remained seated by the hearthstones while Osen Tal’s gaze rested on him. Inside his chest, a sharp, gut distaste pulled against the bargain Ilyra had just struck. For six seasons, ever since he had first felt the Answering Spirit vein wake inside his starved channels at Ash Reed, every step of his training had been built on distinguishing an honest opponent—whose pressure met you in the open and left you larger—from a leech-like system that fed on people in the dark.
Seyun looked at Osen Tal in his neat grey wool coat. He deeply disliked giving this man any voice at all in deciding whose captivity was justified. Osen was the man who had sat in a warm office with a brass tally-pipe and assigned seventeen-year-old Aven of Oran to a numbered bronze trough until the boy’s chest vessels burst. To let the master builder of the cage lecture the rescuers on why the deepest prisoner needed to stay locked up felt dangerously close to letting the Court write the terms of its own audit.
Yet Seyun looked down at the open pages of his own leather-bound Account Book. Then, Daro Kesh’s lesson from the last day echoed clearly through his memory. In the cabbage lane, Kes had wanted to reject everything associated with the Court’s straight-line primer simply. That was because the primer had hurt his rib. Until Seyun and Daro showed him that sharp-angled facts about distance and leverage remained true regardless of who printed the book.
