Before the sound of iron-shod boots on the lower terrace road had even reached the outer gatehouse arch, the twenty quiet minutes inside the tester vault had looked exactly like the beginning of a lawful rescue.
True to the word he had spoken beside the sacred boundary bell in the dusk-lit courtyard, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren had neither delayed nor attached new conditions once they returned down the stone hall. Vaska walked ahead of the group into the twelve-bed chamber. He had ordered the two shrine attendants, Marn and Kellen, to stoke the water tank boiler, bring two fresh jars of finest spring-ash salve from the locked judge’s cupboard, and move the wooden worktable over beside Bed Three where Senn lay waiting.
While Seyun sat on the wooden stool near the stove corner with his right leg propped straight on a low crate so Mina could finish tying the pressure-wrap over his five thigh stitches, Pera had dressed in a heavy gray wool traveling tunic and thick sheepskin boots Mother Renn found in the intake storeroom.
Free of the silver rib-wire for the first time since autumn, the veteran caravan guard didn’t sit idle by the fire.
Walking around the black bronze stone base with the slightly stiff, deliberate gait of a sailor stepping off a rolling river barge after four months afloat, Pera pulled a wooden stool between Bed One and Bed Three. Resting one scarred hand on sixteen-year-old Halin’s iron rail and the other on Senn’s mattress edge…
