Seyun didn’t even walk to the mounting block. He knelt right where he stood on the flat stone slabs so he wouldn’t jar his left shoulder. Meanwhile, Mina crossed the ring with her needle cloth in hand. Unpinning the left collar of his linen shirt, she pressed her thumb into the hollow below his collar bone where the silver crescent mark sat over the knotted return vessel.
Under her thumb, the muscle and spirit vein tissue felt hard as a braided rope, twitching in small, uneven pulses every time Seyun inhaled.
“Hold your exhale at the bottom for two counts,” Mina ordered. She drew two of Seyun’s own three copper needles from the linen roll. With two swift, practiced flicks of her wrist, she set the first needle half an inch lateral to the silver mark and the second at the crease of his anterior shoulder muscle, rotating the copper shafts a quarter-turn counterclockwise to vent the trapped return pressure without bleeding the channel.
Seyun knelt on the flat stone slabs and Mina’s fingers moved with swift. Then, practiced care, nobody in the seal court crowded around to chatter or offer useless sympathy. Daro Kesh stepped back two paces and stood at ease with his short blade lowered. Bel Sar walked over to help Kes up from the edge of the southern drainage trench and check that the boy’s scraped left elbow wasn’t bleeding through his sleeve.
