Nara Soth’s dark eyes narrowed slightly in the starlight. In three hundred years of arguing with Balance masters and Aperture Court test judges, she had heard men boast, bargain, plead necessity, and cite the public good. But she had rarely heard a fighter confess an impure motive. Meanwhile, his hand was still steady on his staff.
“At the Hollow Summit pillar,” Nara said, testing him, “you drove your three copper needles into the stone and swore the third mark with me to split the interrupted pressure so Pera and the other testers could escape the wires. Are you saying the rescue was a lie?”
“The rescue was real,” Seyun answered. He kept his voice level and unrushed against the cold wind. “Splitting the pillar’s pressure with my third place was the only way I knew to get those children down the mountain alive. I’d take that tear under my chest bone again tonight if Halin or Senn were still on the wire. That was half of why I swore the vow.”
The night wind off the northern crags stirred the white braid over Nara Soth’s pinned left sleeve. Then, she listened to Seyun’s confession without interrupting. Hearing the twenty-two-year-old former Ash Reed outer student name the exact vanity he had hidden inside the emergency at the Hollow Summit pillar. Rescuing Halin, Pera, and the other testers had been half his purpose. Just then, he drove his three copper needles into the stone and swore Place III. The other half had…
