Seyun looked at the Chief Judge standing calmly at the foot of the center aisle. Then looked at the twelve stone beds around them.
In Bed Two, Pera’s scarred jaw was set hard as she stared up at the judge. In Bed Six, sixteen-year-old Tov was looking at the man who had signed his brother Jesh’s post-mortem notes and then sent a clerk back to Quarry-Foot to recruit the younger brother for the exact same slab.
“You just told my sister that with our four-beat valve shift, this cohort might survive the tempering cycle,” Seyun said, his voice quiet and steady in the center of the vault.
“Your four-beat ringing reduces the back-pressure on the between-rib nodes by nearly forty percent,” Vaska Ren acknowledged frankly. “It’s a significant refinement. If you and your sister remain here to monitor the valves through the morning lamp-relighting, all twelve of them may survive the month.”
“Then unlock the twelve brass floor cuffs right now,” Seyun said simply. He pointed to the master release rack by the spiral stair. “Tell Halin, Pera, Tov, Yul. The other eight the whole truth that you just told us. That Nara Soth is dying upstairs, that thirty-one people have already died on these slabs. That if the pillar fails, the valley below is in danger. And then ask them, with their hands and ankles unbound, whether any of them chooses to lie back down on the stone.”
