Dawn of the fifth day since the snow bridge broke clear and razor-sharp over Ash Reed Sect’s central terrace courtyard. Inside Seyun’s chest, the fifth sunrise increment of Ilyra’s Deeper Bronze echo clicked into place beneath his left collarbone. Leaving forty-eight hours until Dawn 7 demanded his own Early Bronze answer.
Out on the wide granite flat stone slabs of the central terrace, fifty winter buyers were already stamping their boots against the frost and murmuring in open dismay as they looked up at the tiered stone auction platform. In every normal winter of Seyun’s eleven years at the sect, the green baize table at the front of the platform had held twenty to thirty two-pound heavy clay jars of silver-grey third-terrace reed ash, ready to be weighed out for village bonesetters, caravan quartermasters, and town apothecaries.
This morning, only six tiny four-ounce sample pouches sat on the green baize cloth. Ten paces behind the auctioneer’s podium, stacked under heavy hemp tarpaulins beside the inner-court gate, sat twelve massive wooden shipping casks sealed with the pale, circular wax stamp of the Aperture Court.
Fifteen minutes before the brass opening gong was due to sound, Elder Hesh led Seyun and Mina up the side steps into the enclosed weights-and-measures pavilion overlooking the eastern edge of the courtyard. Inside the heated cedar pavilion, Senior Elder Tor Ves sat behind the long dark wood balance-beam table.
