Seyun didn’t try to block a Jade-scale column of falling limestone with a Flame mantle. Hooking both hands under Joren’s armpits, he pivoted on his sound right boot and his braced left heel, using the Returning Step to throw both of their bodies sideways off the low wooden porch into the shelter of the heavy granite herb-washing trough three paces to the west.
Half a heartbeat after their shoulders hit the mud behind the four-foot granite trough, the guardian’s twin stone forearms smashed the sick room porch to splinters. Seasoned cedar posts snapped like dry reeds. A wave of scalding stone water and pulverised slate sprayed over the top lip of the granite trough, stinging the backs of Seyun’s hands and neck until the skin blistered bright red. Inside the sick room behind the collapsed porch, sixteen-year-old Tarek and the older foundation boys were already hauling the last straw pallet out the rear garden door as Mina held the back shutter open for them.
He crouched in the warm mud behind the granite trough with Joren breathing raggedly against his knee. Seyun looked up through the swirling white sulfur steam at the towering shape of the Mineral Spring Guardian. The spirit wrenched its limestone forearms free of the splintered porch timbers. Then, the sheer thickness of its earth-heat intention pressed down on Seyun’s chest until his ribs creaked. He had felt Jade pressure three times before—under Hall Mistress Soran’s archive bell, across Chief Judge Vaska Ren’s gravel courtyard, and beneath…
