Reth Mal had gambled his final, desperate lunge on a simple piece of physical arithmetic. Nara Soth had only one arm.
Her left arm had been cut above the elbow hundreds of years ago during the fall of the old Counterpoise Sect. Her right hand was currently clamped around the plain ash walking staff. He held the upright sky-draw of the twelve pale blades stationary in the northern feeder groove. In Reth’s math, the ancient challenger faced an impossible choice. Either she kept her single hand on the staff and watched his nine-inch belt knife plunge into Halin’s throat, or she let go of the staff to block his knife and let the unbuffered Crown pressure of the overhead ring crush the boy’s heart.
What Reth Mal had forgotten—because the Aperture Court’s manuals only studied Nara Soth as a stationary battery pinned to a bronze pillar—was how a fighter of the Listening Crown actually held a stance.
Reth’s Jade-sheathed belt knife flashed down within eight inches of Halin’s collarbone. Then, Nara Soth didn’t let go of the ash walking staff with her body.
Instead, in a movement so fast and economical that only Hall Mistress Soran and Daro Kesh caught its mechanics, Nara shifted her chin and right collarbone forward two inches, pinning the upper third of the upright ash walking staff squarely between the side of her neck, her scarred right shoulder muscle, and the heavy bone of her chest bone. Transferring the upright Crown buffer down through the…
