For three full breaths after Ilyra pulled back to the southern treatment room doorway, the Bronze Court rider kept his hooked chain spinning around the central granite stone stand in baffled silence. In fifteen years of trial enforcement duels, no opponent contesting a piece of evidence had ever simply walked away from the stone stand in the middle of the third exchange. Then he left the prize sitting bare on the stone.
Up on the covered walkway, the twenty-four town apothecaries and Oran guild tax clerks craned their necks over the railing. They whispered in confusion as they wondered whether the White Heron student was forfeiting the metal tube to protect the sickroom door. On the upper steps, Senior Elder Tor Ves leaned forward with a sudden flicker of hope that the duel was about to end without a trial officer being humiliated on sect grounds.
Only three people in the courtyard understood right away what Ilyra’s retreat had just done to the combat shape: Daro Kesh watching quietly from the eastern curb with his hand on his broken sword handle knob. Bel Sar standing by the southern stair with his raw knuckles wrapped in Mina’s linen. And Seyun, braced on his braced left heel against the porch post.
