At the base of the eastern wall, just outside the narrow stone archway of the service passage, Steward Osen tried to drag himself upright with his one good arm. His blood-soaked service coat left a dark smear against the stone pilaster.
Six paces away near the southern pillar, the two surviving Court wardens—whose wrists and ankles had been cleanly out-of-joint or sprained by Daro and Ilyra earlier in the fight rather than crippled—had managed to hobble to their feet, bracing each other by the belt. The six-blade convergence roared down toward the center of the vault.
On the center flat stone slabs, Assistant Examiner Reth Mal saw the two guards standing and screamed at them in a voice cracked with panic and fury. “Wardens! Pick up my ledger case and carry me to the upper nook! That’s a direct order of the Aperture Court—anyone who abandons a judge faces the pillar!”
At the threshold of the eastern passage, Hall Mistress Soran paused for half a heartbeat as she covered Nara Soth’s retreat, her iron spear point flicking once from the groaning steward by the wall to the two limping guards. “Take the man who took a blade for a healer,” Soran barked over the shriek of the spinning ring, “or stay in the cellar with the man who pulled a knife on a bound boy!”
