The words Chief Examiner Vaska Ren spoke beside Bed Two didn’t carry the heat of an insulted duelist. They fell into the quiet vault with the dry, measured finality of a judge setting bail.
“You have proved that one tester with a five-year-old collateral flank scar can be unwired without fracturing the Listening Crown,” Vaska said, his narrow face composed in the yellow lamplight while the eleven leftover rib-wires hummed around the black bronze stone base. “Now you ask me to let you place your hands on Candidate Three or Candidate One—whose channels carry no such preexisting detour—and to rewrite the working doctrine of the northern seal while Heaven’s Measure presses against the roof above us.”
Pera sat on the edge of Bed Two with her empty barley bowl in her lap. She scowled up at the tall grey-robed official. “He didn’t ask you to rewrite a book, Judge. He asked you to stop lying that a person can’t refuse your wire and live. I’m sitting right here breathing on my own two lungs.”
“And you’ll remain unwired, Pera, as I promised,” Vaska replied without turning his gaze from Seyun. “My word on the twenty-four-hour trial holds. No attendant in this shrine will touch your ribs again under my power. What hasn’t been decided is whether this young man’s test distinction is robust enough to govern the leftover eleven beds—or whether it’s a fragile trick that only survives when the patient has four hours of quiet and a convenient scar.”
