Pera swung her legs over the side of Bed Two and planted both bare feet on the stone floor towel. Then, every breath in the vault stopped to watch what the black bronze pillar would do to an unwired chest.
Even without the silver-soldered filament between her fifth and sixth ribs, the surrounding deep ring of the column filled the circular room like the downdraft of a great millwheel. Every four heartbeats, as the sub-floor pipe hub sent its timed together pulse through the eleven leftover beds, a sympathetic wave of Crown pressure washed across the air of the chamber—tugging out of four months’ habit at Pera’s inward-closing lung channels, inviting her ribs to fall back into the easy, easy rhythm of the ring.
Pera sat on the edge of the iron frame with Mother Renn’s wooden bowl of salted barley broth in her hands.
The first surrounding wave brushed against her breastbone. Then, her scarred left shoulder tensed for half a beat in old memory. Then she looked down at her bare left foot resting on the towel, felt the warm collateral vein pulsing two beats ahead of the room’s hum. Then she deliberately let her breath drop low around her eleventh floating rib.
