When the Aperture Court enforcement rider twisted the knurled brass collar of his locator metal tube to its full stop at the foot of the sick room steps, the two-pronged tuning fork protruding from its nose didn’t emit a loud battlehorn blast. Instead, it produced a thin, slicing metal whine that cut through the cold mountain air like a wet saw blade drawn across iron wire. Every person standing in the outer herb court felt the shaking behind their back teeth before their ears registered the pitch.
Seyun’s right hand went instinctively to his chest bone. Beneath his mended grey coat, all three Rival Marks reacted to the ringing signed name. Even so, none was a Court needle. Place I and Place II tightened along his collarbones as his Dual-Route Flame braced against the external probe. Meanwhile, Place III below his breastbone—tied to Nara Soth inside the Listening Crown lattice at the Hollow Summit—answered with a sharp, cold tug of recognition. The artificers who forged that brass metal tube in the Aperture Court’s workshops had tuned its crystal lens and tuning fork to hunt one specific thing across the northern valleys. Any human spirit vein or spirit vessel that had been scored by the summit’s holding and test needles.
