Halin’s knees gave out before his boots had cleared the edge of the reed mat.
Even though his chest and wrist were free of the silver pins, sixteen-year-old Halin had spent weeks strapped to a stone frame with his muscles starved of ordinary movement. The sudden rush of independent breath flow left his legs shaking like wet reeds. If he tried to run fifteen yards across the vault floor, the sweeping outer blades would cut him down five paces from the mat.
Seyun didn’t waste a breath asking whether the boy could walk.
Seyun dropped to one knee beside the mat. Meanwhile, Mina gathered her leather needle roll and metal tongs in a single sweep of her left hand. He slid his healthy right arm beneath the backs of Halin’s knees, braced the boy’s waist across his right shoulder, and heaved himself upright with the sixteen-year-old carried squarely across his right collarbone and back.
Halin’s hundred and ten pounds settled onto Seyun’s frame. Then, the two cracked ribs on Seyun’s left side ground together like broken slate.
A sharp, white-hot stab of pain lanced through Seyun’s left lung lining, stealing half his breath. At the same time, his scorched right forearm throbbed against the back of Halin’s calves. Instantly, his body’s trained fighter reflex offered him the easy relief. If he surged his Early Bronze qi into his chest wall and outer arm to brace the cracked ribs and numb the burn, the pain would vanish for the thirty seconds…
