The village threshing floor was a forty-foot circle of fitted river flat stone slabs laid on a windy knoll between the empty barley barns and the lower hospice orchard. In autumn, teams of mules walked circles over the stone to tread grain from the husk. Today, the wind had swept the gray slabs bare except for a rim of dry chaff wedged in the cracks and two heavy wooden A-frames that the farmers used for airing damp pulley wheels.
Mina was already waiting on the low stone curbing at the edge of the circle, her leather needle roll spread across her lap and a small brass sand glass standing beside a covered clay jar of warm stone spring ash. Ten paces away sat Kes and Pera, wrapping spare wooden splints in linen strips while they watched.
Seyun stepped into the center of the circle and unbound the heavy wool cloak from his shoulders, laying it beside Mina’s basket. The cold mountain air bit through his hemp practice shirt at once, waking the five-day-old pale scar below his chest bone where Place III had sealed shut.
Across the flat stone slabs, Nara Soth didn’t unpin her empty left sleeve or draw upon the vast, multi-layered stillness of the Crown realm. Instead, she set her walking staff aside, picked up a second plain, plain ash pole that Bel Sar had cut to six feet. Then she rolled her right shoulder twice to loosen the muscles stiffened by three hours of riveting Tavan’s…
