Kneeling behind the corner of the four-foot stone dressing-screen while Daro Kesh’s shortened Bronze sword ground sparks off the two Court axe-spears one pace in front of her, Mina didn’t try to creep toward the stone base with her bone metal tongs hidden behind her skirt.
Instead, she held the pale bone metal tongs openly in her right hand against her dark wool apron, rested her left palm flat on the cold slate floor at the edge of the screen. Then she met Halin’s scared, frost-rimmed eyes across the six-pace gap.
“Halin,” Mina said clearly. “When Seyun and I unpinned your bed in the Hollow Summit bunkhouse four days ago, did I lie to you about whether the needle extraction would hurt?”
On the central stone base, Halin blinked through his frozen tears, his chest hitching as the silver wrist cuff forced another deep, clockwork ninety-beat inhale through his lungs. “N-no,” he stammered. “You told me the third vent would burn my forearm nerve like hot animal fat for ten breaths before the numbness wore off.”
“Then listen to me now,” Mina said. Her nineteen-year-old voice carried the quiet, rock-steady power of the river clinic where she had stitched boatmen’s crushed hands and set timber-workers’ broken ribs since she was twelve. “Because I’m not going to give you a false assurance to make you stop crying. I’m not going to lie to you the way Assistant Examiner Reth Mal is lying.”
