Snick.
Kes’s left thumb snapped the sliding brass shutter closed over the oil lamp’s lens.
In a single instant, the warm yellow cone of light on the flat stone slabs winked out. It plunged the forty-foot courtyard into total, ink-black darkness at the exact moment Bel Sar’s seven-foot padded pole came whistling back across the yard for the second exchange.
Had Seyun been staring at the flame as he had on Pass 1, the sudden shift from bright yellow light to pitch black would have left a blinding purple afterimage floating across his eyes for three full breaths—long enough for Bel’s pole to sweep the center stones clean.
Because his eyelids were already half-shut and his attention was anchored to the sound and contact channels of the yard, the disappearance of the light didn’t blind him at all.
To his ears and the soles of his boots, the shutter click was simply a clear, clear sentence spoken in brass: Forward crossing abandoned. Lamp carrier changing objective.
Right away behind that metal click came the physical confirmation on the flat stone slabs. Instead of continuing northward toward the clinic porch steps, Kes planted the ball of his right boot hard on the center mortar seam, pivoted a hundred and thirty degrees on his heel, and darted backward on a fast southwestern slanted straight toward the stone wellhead near the kitchen corner. At the same time, four feet to the east, Pera lengthened her stride northward toward the porch while shifting the…
