Seyun didn’t take his hand off the canvas satchel, and he didn’t step back from either Daro Kesh’s iron handle knob or Nara Soth’s dark gaze.
For eleven years in the outer courtyards of Ash Reed, Seyun had been told by elders and stewards what he was allowed to practice, what records he was allowed to read, and when he was supposed to bow his head for the good of the school. Even standing six paces from a three-hundred-year-old Crown fighter whose breath held up a mountain roof, the habit of automatic rule-following was gone from his spine.
“No,” Seyun said.
He answered Daro’s question and Nara’s demand with the same single word.
“If Daro smashes Master Uren’s tablet on this floor right now,” Seyun said, his voice clear and unrushed in the freezing vault, “the stone will be gravel, you’ll feel cleaner about what happens after you die, and thirty minutes from now when the northern wind shifts, Halin, Pera, Senn. The other nine people downstairs will still have silver wire soldered into their seventh ribs.”
Nara Soth’s jaw tightened. “Vaska already has the outer-hall copies downstairs. He doesn’t need Uren’s third piece to keep them wired—he wants Uren’s third piece so he can build a permanent living replacement for me when my spine gives out.”
