The brass collar clicked back into its notch and Nara Soth’s knees settled flat onto the salt-ringed flat stone slabs. Then, a dark, warm scent of fresh blood rose into the freezing mountain air of the upper vault.
Behind her right shoulder blade. There, the third inner needle angled against her sixth dorsal node, her sudden backward drop had driven the slotted star-fallen iron tip half an inch deeper than its resting seat. A dark red stain spread slowly across the faded gray wool of her quilted coat. It steamed faintly in the sub-zero draft from the roof hole before the cold began to crust its edges.
Nara Soth didn’t wince, and she didn’t reach back to touch the bleeding puncture. She lowered her single right hand palm-down onto her patched knee. Her chest rising and fell in a slow, iron-willed four-count rhythm as she used her own fifth-realm breath flow to draw the excess pressure back up the central bronze pipe into her own spine.
Beneath their boots, the bluish-white spark in the outward floor grooves died out, and the jagged hammering of the bronze column subsided back into its heavy, four-count winter tide.
Seyun was already at the stairwell door.
