KRA-CLANG!
The sound that rang across the Chamber of Permitted Shapes. Just then, the three-foot crescent of solidified sky pressure struck the iron collar of Ilyra’s spear was not the clean chime of weapon meeting weapon. It was the ear-splitting, high-pitched shriek of a quarry saw biting through frozen iron.
Three inches behind Seyun’s braced left heel inside the chalk boundary, the manually directed twelfth blade of Heaven’s Measure slammed into the upper third of the plain marsh-iron spear Ilyra had thrust across the line from her low-kneeling stance.
Had Ilyra been holding that spear with the rigid, fancy pride she had carried four days ago at the birch crossroads—trying to preserve the unbroken line of the weapon as if the iron point itself were her school’s honor—the sheer stepped-up mountain weight of the six-latch channel blade would have driven the shaft straight down into the black slate and crushed her wrists beneath it.
Instead, kneeling half an inch outside the white chalk circle with her grey eyes clear and unblinking in the blinding white-gold spray of sparks, Ilyra applied the exact Deeper Bronze truth she had spoken to Seyun and Daro on the snow bridge above the chimney fissure.
