For the remainder of the eighth afternoon and throughout the entire ninth day of the countdown, Seyun honored his sister’s medical order without cheating by a single step.
He sat on a wide pine bench on the covered south porch of the hospice, his stitched left calf propped level on a rolled sheepskin pad and Nara’s plain ash staff resting across his knees.
All around him, the final preparations of the valley moved forward in brisk, unrushed layers. Down in the vaulted stone root cellar behind the kitchen, Tavan had knocked out the loose brick in the west chimney pipe and set up his small bellows and horn anvil. All through the morning of Day 9, the steady tink-clink of the smith’s hammer drifted up through the floorboards as he straightened bent iron splint frames and forged three extra iron socket-wedges to match Vaska Ren’s sample. In the courtyard, Pera and Senn—sitting in his leather chest brace—sorted linen roller bandages into oiled waterproof packets. Meanwhile, Halin changed the stone-ash healing wraps on Seyun’s calf and collarbone at noon and dusk.
Up at the seal court, Daro Kesh, Ilyra, Hall Mistress Soran, and Keth Or ran two more timing passes against Vaska’s tuned lens without Seyun, mapping how the four-pair approach would divide the outer approaches if Seyun’s leg limited his sprint speed on the twelfth night.
