They learned within the first ten minutes that the hardest part of freeing a human being from the black bronze pillar was not the pillar’s violence, but its kindness.
Seyun knelt on a folded wool blanket beside the right rail of Bed Two, his bandaged left hand resting lightly on the iron bedframe to ground his balance while two fingers of his right hand touched the small bronze metal ring where the current-carrying wire entered Pera’s between-rib wrapping. Across the narrow mattress, Mina sat with her left fingers on Pera’s outward pulse and her right hand resting at the lower margin of Pera’s scarred left floating rib. Mother Renn stood at the foot of the bed with a basin of warm reed-ash water and fresh linen pads. Meanwhile, Osen Tal kept the oil lamp steady three paces back.
“When the next wave comes up from the sub-floor pipe hub,” Seyun said quietly, matching his own breathing to the four-beat rhythm humming through the bronze metal ring, “I’m going to use my Returning Step to hold a small Flame buffer at the outer lip of your socket. The common test needle will feel my Flame pushback and treat the wire as still loaded. For those four beats, Pera, the pillar’s push inside your chest will vanish. Don’t pull air straight up your breastbone. Drop your breath low toward your left hip, the way you did on the salt wagons after Red Ditch.”
