On the sixth dawn since the northern chamber—with twenty-four hours leftover before Daro Kesh’s Early Jade echo arrived in the silver mark beneath Seyun’s right collarbone—mist hung thick and rotten-egg over the terraced hot-spring channels of the Ash Reed Sect. Walking down the steep stone mule track beside Daro and Joren with his ash staff in his right hand and his braced ribs bound fresh under his scorched grey coat, Seyun looked across the boundary ditch he had crossed in disgrace two months ago. Then, Elder Hesh had pressed three copper needles into his palm at the outer gate. Meanwhile, Senior Elder Tor Ves taken away the winter herb share meant for Mina.
Today, no gate guard challenged them at the lower stone bridge. Half the outer-court fences still bore the stone-salt crust from the day the Aperture Court rider’s device had woken the spring guardian. The hospice survivors sheltered in the lower herb sheds nodded quietly to Seyun as he passed. At the open-fronted forge shop built beside the lower waterfall chute, Master Gant—a sixty-year-old blacksmith whose leather apron was stiff with iron scale and spring lime—turned Daro’s three shattered Bronze sword fragments over on his cold anvil.
“Good Oran river-bronze,” Master Gant muttered. He tapped the center shard with a light ball-peen hammer and listening to the dead ring. “Seasoned for a single downward plane. You forced a side-entry Jade turn into this fuller. Then, Master Kesh, the outer skin pulled left while the core stayed straight. If…
