Seeing the boy hesitate at the foot of the seal court steps where the wind was sharpest, Seyun closed his inkhorn, picked up his staff. Then he walked down the gravel path with Mina toward the sheltered kitchen garden behind the hospice. “Come sit out of the draft, Halin,” Seyun said warmly. He gestured toward the sunny wooden bench beside the herb-drying racks where Nara Soth had walked with the boy the last evening. “Did the climb up from the shed make your knees shake?”
“Only once at the middle turn, Master Seyun,” Halin said. He sat on the edge of the bench with his back straight. “I used the heartbeat pause before my breath sped up, just like yesterday. My ankle held.”
In the bright mid-morning light, Seyun could see how much color had returned to the sixteen-year-old’s cheeks since the night they pulled him out of Reth Mal’s northern blade ring. Yet Halin unclasped his hands and rested them on his patched knees. Then, the physical record of the Aperture Court’s rig remained starkly visible. Just above both outward pulses—and peeking above the collar of his wool shirt near his left collar bone—sat small, dark-red circular scabs where Mina had pulled out the silver-and-bronze test needles that Vaska Ren and Reth Mal had used to wire the boy’s inward-closing channels to the mountain.
