Up in the lower shrine, when the shattered outer socket sent a stray whip of white pressure slashing across the pavilion floor, Hall Mistress Soran didn’t plant her feet in the rigid old White Heron ward. Incorporating the responsive branching correction she had learned from her student Ilyra in the northern chamber, Soran deflected the whip into the broken roof pillars with her plain iron spear, hooked the half-conscious Reth Mal by his coat collar, braced the bleeding Keth Or against her right shoulder. Then she guided the voiceless Vaska Ren down the eastern switchbacks before the upper ring could drop a blade.
Warned by the distant crack of the socket, Seyun, Daro Kesh, and sixteen-year-old Halin met them at the foot of the eastern trail with canvas litters and hemp tourniquets. Within fifteen minutes, all three Aperture Court officers were laid out on the scrubbed pine tables of the lower hospice treatment room.
Mina took command of the room with the calm, unrushed power that allowed no rank or political history to interfere with triage. While Mother Renn boiled linen strips and Halin laid out the bone stitch needles, Mina assessed the three men in order of bleeding risk.
