Pera and Mother Renn’s footsteps echoed away down the dark stone steps of the rear supply passage. Then, Seyun stood with his bandaged hand on the tunnel door-bar and looked back across the circular chamber at the eleven people still lying on their iron frames.
Sixteen-year-old Halin on Bed One, his thin chest rising and falling on the four-beat tug of the silver wire between his ribs. Senn on Bed Three, flexing his scarred right ankle under the blanket. He waited for a bedside turn that had just been interrupted at the first minute. Maren, Tov, and Vey on Beds Four, Five, and Six. Kori and old Dren on Beds Seven and Eight with the red acupuncture marks still visible on their wrists. Sela, Borin, Neth, and Yul along the deep tripod lugs on the far curve of the bronze column.
Every instinct in Seyun’s twenty-two-year-old body screamed to draw Mina’s razor-sharp shears from her bag, run around the circle of the black bronze pillar, cut all eleven silver rib-wires at the ferrules, and shout for every captive in the vault to run down the supply tunnel together into the night.
In the stories wandering bards told in village teahouses, that was how a rescue worked. The hero broke the iron chains with one bold swing, and the prisoners ran out into the sun.
