Mina forbade a fourth pass until after noon. For one full hour while the winter sun crossed the southern low roof wall, Seyun sat on a dry cedar pallet in the western nook drinking a bowl of hot barley-and-marrow broth Mother Renn had sent up from the hospice. She was followed by forty minutes of motionless foundation breathing with a fresh mint compress over his right collarbone. By the time he stood up and re-tied the horn toggles of his scorched wool coat for the afternoon session, the prickly heat in his subclavian channel had cooled into a clear, receptive ache.
Seyun stepped back onto the starting chalk mark between Ilyra’s shortened spear and Kes’s twelve-foot hemp cord. He changed the way he prepared his Answering Edge. In all his last bouts—against Bel Sar at the ash bowl, against Keth Or in the northern chamber, and against the returning route at the hillside shrine—he had shaped his Bronze edge along the staff before contact occurred, pre-loading a sharp, slicing bending designed to slide off hard iron or stone.
Now, Seyun took Kes’s correction to heart. He held only the single preserved purpose in the center of his chest—walking ten paces to tap the bronze stone stand—while leaving the Early Bronze breath in his wrists and forearms unshaped until the wood of his staff actually felt what was touching it.
