For sixty years, the High Trial of the Aperture Court had told every river hall and mountain sect in the province that the Chamber of Permitted Shapes was an incorruptible, impersonal mirror of cosmic law. That when the pale semi-clear blades of the overhead ring dropped to sever a tester’s shoulder or spine, it wasn’t a human judge striking in anger, but Heaven’s Measure itself correcting an unlawful stance.
In the fourth breath of Seyun’s unfinished Bronze stance, Assistant Examiner Reth Mal proved with his own two hands that the cosmic mirror had always had a manual crank behind the curtain.
Pinned one pace back from the bronze lectern by Hall Mistress Soran’s blistering seventeen-copper iron spear, Reth Mal saw Mina sprinting toward the chalk circle with her bone metal tongs and saw the twelve pale blades overhead still chattering in place around Seyun’s neck. That was because the floor relays couldn’t classify his unclosed circuit.
If Reth waited another two heartbeats for the automatic relays to resolve the strange flaw, Halin would break his inward entrainment and Mina would pull the silver wrist needle before the seventh latch could drop.
With a snarl of pure panic, Reth Mal deliberately took Hall Mistress Soran’s next iron thrust across the thick bronze guard of his left forearm—letting the plain iron point rip open his leather sleeve and score a bloody furrow along his forearm bone—so that he could free his right hand on the butt of his channel-linked fork-spear.
