Standing at the top of the hollow bronze stair with snow swirling down through the spear-width sky-slit onto her white hair and scarred face, Nara Soth spoke her terms down the column loud enough for every person in the lower vault—Mina at the beds, Ilyra and Daro in the aisle, Vaska Ren at the southeastern lug. The eleven wired captives—to hear and witness.
“For twenty years I haven’t been able to reach the sub-floor return line from up here because the Court’s test needle blurred the captives’ pulses into my own reflected pressure,” Nara Soth said. Her voice ringing like was cold iron down the bronze throat. “Right now, your three copper needles have knocked the test needle loose. But I still need a clean, voluntary reference rhythm at the base of the column to tell where the machine’s false return ends and a living circuit begins. Only a sworn mark of the Answering Spirit vein can give me that contrast through forty feet of bronze.”
Beside Bed Three, Mina looked sharply at her brother while holding Senn’s wrist. Six paces away in the aisle, Daro Kesh blocked a guard’s axe-spear with his split blade and listened closely.
“I’ll not give you that bond for free, bearer of Uren’s tablet,” Nara Soth declared from the upper landing. “Here is my wager. Swear the third and final place of your diagram to me tonight. In return, I’ll use our joined circuit as a contrasting reference to redirect the pillar’s false return…
