Sixteen-year-old Halin had spent four months wired by his wrists to the northern floor circuits of the Aperture Court, where every breath he took was dictated by a bronze needle and every pause was punished by Reth Mal’s voice.
For the past two weeks at the shepherd hospice, however, Halin had been learning a different trade at Mina’s pine table. How to look at a human body and a physical room, read what was actually happening before him, and decide what his own hands needed to do before anyone gave him an order.
Running half a step ahead of Mina’s right shoulder inside the mouth of the eastern pillar lane, the boy saw two facts at the same time. First, bright red blood was dripping from the back of Seyun’s right wrist onto the ash staff as Seyun held Daro Kesh’s short Jade sword wedged at the edge of the first eight-sided pillar. Second, because Daro had stepped inside the bind. Then he dropped his depth, the straight twelve-foot span between the second and third eastern pillars ahead of them was already filling with the dark, compressing shimmer of Daro’s backup sword plane. Even with Seyun bleeding to hold the entrance open for this half-breath, two walkers carrying forty-seven pounds of baskets couldn’t sprint straight through that narrowed eastern bottleneck before the next stroke closed it.
