“Second exchange—begin!” Osen Tal called from the porch steps.
This time, Vaska Ren’s narrow gray sword didn’t rise toward Seyun’s throat.
As Vaska stepped forward, he kept his blade tip dipped half an inch into the two-inch layer of coarse granite gravel covering the courtyard floor. And poured his capped early Bronze Sky-slit intention straight down through the steel into the loose stone.
Grind-shhhk.
Across a six-foot circle surrounding Seyun’s boots, the loose gray granite pebbles didn’t scatter outward. Under the beveling, inward-narrowing shape of the Sky-slit, the gravel slid inward in three nested, linked ridges that rose and compacted around both of Seyun’s ankles like a mason’s dry-stone vise snapping shut.
By the porch steps, Mina gasped aloud as she saw the stone ridges lock around her brother’s boots. Meanwhile, Vaska was still three full paces away.
The tactical adaptation was ruthless in its simplicity.
On Exchange One, Seyun had defeated Vaska’s pre-contact reading by holding two plausible footwork routes open in his soles until the blade touched his sleeve. Now, by turning the loose courtyard gravel itself into a moving physical constriction three beats before the sword arrived, Vaska forced the contact to happen at Seyun’s ankles first.
