For one cold heartbeat on the threshold of the lower shrine, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren saw the exact math his younger self would have made. Reth Mal and Keth Or had defied confinement and climbed this ridge specifically to prove that the Aperture Court’s forcing doctrine was right. If Vaska simply stepped back down the stairs with Soran and left Reth pinned to the floor, the Measure would finish converting the assistant judge into a fixed human anchor. Buying the valleys several extra days of balance at the price of one fanatic who had volunteered for the post.
Twenty days ago at the Hollow Summit, Vaska would have called that arithmetic tragic necessity and written Reth’s name into the memorial ledger.
Today, Vaska rejected his old math without a second thought. No human being—not a sixteen-year-old prisoner from Oran, and not an arrogant assistant judge who hated him—was going to be left wired into a stone socket. Meanwhile, Vaska Ren could still draw breath.
Motioning Soran back from the central white column with a sharp wave of his hand, Vaska stepped into the freezing glare of the pavilion. He had designed and bolted the bronze test socket into this floor twenty winters ago. Because of that, he knew why Keth’s blade had failed. The upright pale needle was backed by the entire weight of the upper ring. That made it uncuttable from the side.
