Seyun sat cross-legged on the eastern low roof wall during the final ten minutes before Dawn Three broke over the crags. He laid his three copper needles side by side on the flat dark rock beside his knee, spacing them three fingerbreadths apart just as he had driven them around the base of the Hollow Summit pillar when Place III first opened.
The cold bronze-copper shafts gleamed faintly under the retreating stars. On the summit, he had used those three needles to split an interrupted wave of forcing pressure so Nara Soth and the testers could breathe. Six evenings ago, he and Nara had closed the mark those needles had helped witness because keeping it open would have meant inventing a lie between people who respected each other.
He picked the three copper needles up one by one, slid them back into the leather sheath inside his wrist-guard. Then he turned his palms upward on his knees. Just then, the first red thread of sunrise cut the eastern horizon.
An hour before the first grey light touched the eastern crags on the third morning of the countdown, Seyun woke on his narrow bunk, checked that the stone spring-ash wrap around his left ribs remained snug. Then he walked up the quiet stone switchbacks to the abandoned seal court alone. Frost had settled thick and powdery over the eight-sided granite pillars during the night. Down in the hospice sheds, the lanterns were still dark. Even Daro Kesh and Bel Sar had…
