Behind the fractured stone screen on the western side of the Chamber of Permitted Shapes, Seyun sat with his back braced against the cold granite partition. Meanwhile, Mina finished knotting the third linen squeezing strap around his left rib cage. Every shallow breath he took felt as though someone had wedged two shards of flint between his seventh and eighth ribs. Down the upper northern passage, the heavy iron-shod footsteps of Commander Keth Or’s retreating squad were still fading up the frost-slick stairs. That left Keth’s dropped glaive lying ten paces away beside a dark smear of blood where Daro Kesh’s broken sword had shattered the commander’s wrist.
Yet Keth Or’s retreat had bought the room no peace. At the center of the engraved flat stone slabs, sixteen-year-old Halin remained pinned on his knees inside the chalk circle. Mina had successfully pulled out the main silver restraint needle from his right wrist. Even so, four backup collar and forearm channels still tethered the boy’s inward channels to the floor array. Above his head, deprived of its clean central lock, the twelve-foot ring of semi-clear pale blades tilted at a steep, screaming thirty-degree angle. Its lower edge dipping within two feet of the stone floor as it hunted for a stable cultivated signed name to drag into Halin’s vacated place.
