Jade Retrieval Commander Keth Or didn’t go down the last three steps of the northern guard post stairs until his six fresh Court pikemen had locked their bronze-rimmed shields into a crescent across the foot of the archway.
At the corner of the four-foot granite dressing-screen on the western rim of the chalk circle, Seyun helped Mina pad a folded wool cloak behind Halin’s knees and shoulders against the base of the stone partition so the four leftover backup pins stayed slack, then rose to a half-crouch with his iron short-blade held low in his right hand.
Across the sixty-foot underground room, the cold air felt as though it were being pumped full of wet mortar.
Every breath needed a deliberate pull of the ribs against the surrounding pressure streaming from the tall, square-shouldered commander in dark iron-scale armor who now stepped onto the outermost silver-inlaid floor ring.
Five days ago at White Heron Hall, Keth Or had fought with the unrushed, office certainty of an officer executing a routine eviction order against a country school.
Tonight, in the violet-lit gloom beneath the tilted twelve-foot ring of pale test blades, a thick, three-buckle brace of boiled ox-hide and iron splints was strapped tightly around the commander’s right wrist. The exact joint where Daro Kesh’s broken Bronze sword had bitten through his guard during the retreat from the hall.
