“Don’t sit there looking at me like a forgiving saint who saved me from myself, Seyun,” Joren said. His voice rough and shook with a resentment that six weeks of illness had only packed. “You took the fire blistering out of my chest today with your needles. I’ll pay your sister’s clinic fee down to the last copper when the pears sell. But don’t expect me to thank you for what you did at the winter check.”
Seyun stayed seated on his heels on the reed mat, his hands resting flat on his thighs as he let Joren speak.
“When you stood up on that check platform in front of the fifty valley patrons and the trade ring factor from Oran and announced that my outward pulse was a fake, you didn’t save my channels from the fire spirit,” Joren said bitterly. “I had already absorbed the priming heat three days before the ceremony! The hook was already in my chest!”
Joren’s fist clenched against the damp blanket.
“If you had kept your mouth shut on the platform and brought your pulse reading to Elder Hesh’s room after the guests went home, the trade ring factor would have signed my father’s three-year loan extension before my channels collapsed. Instead, your big public speech started rumours across every tavern in Oran before I even fell sick! The trade ring froze our credit two weeks ago because of the whisper you started!”
