A thin ribbon of dark, half-clotted blood followed the polished silver tip of the first conducting rod as it cleared the old scar tissue below Nara Soth’s right shoulder blade. Instantly, the one-sixth share of the pillar’s downward draw that had passed through that channel jumped across the three-inch air gap in a snapping blue arc and bit straight into Vaska Ren’s bare knuckles.
The Chief Judge’s breath hissed through his scarred windpipe as his forearm muscles locked hard. He took in the jolt into his own late-Jade spirit veins rather than letting it ground down the spiral stair into Senn’s bed. He didn’t pause to rub his blistered skin. Moving with the careful speed of the man who had designed the turnbuckle threads himself, Vaska stepped to the second rod, broke its wax seal. Then he uncoupled it, then the third, the fourth, and the fifth.
With each rod that fell clattering against the bronze floor cradle, the high-pitched whine in the lancet arches dropped an octave. The crushing sky weight resting on Vaska’s shoulders doubled. By the time his fingers closed around the sixth and final main rod—the central spinal anchor seated between Nara’s shoulder blades—a thin line of red had appeared at Vaska’s left nostril. The tendons in his neck stood out like taut bowstrings around his old burn scar.
