As Halin walked back across the center flat stone slabs to retrieve the thirty-five-pound wicker basket of iron-heavy splints he had dropped in the mouth of the eastern pillar lane—its woven reed rim bearing a single clean two-inch shave where Daro’s retreating blade had kissed it without touching a single splint inside—Ilyra stepped up to the threshold block where Seyun sat and rested the butt of her rawhide-bound spear on the stone beside his boot.
Two days ago on the snapped livestock shelf, she had looked down at his bleeding calf and calmly refused to call a one-exchange hold a breakthrough.
Now, looking at the settled clarity in his eyes and the quiet, unstrained rhythm of his collarbone channels beneath his open collar, she offered him a rare, unguarded smile and bowed her head half an inch. The exact salute one Jade fighter gives an equal.
“Congratulations, Seyun,” Ilyra said warmly. “That held across all three exchanges. You didn’t push Mina or Halin an inch off their feet to buy it.”
“Your seven-dawn question gave me the structure,” Seyun said. He looked up at the silver-white spearhead above her rawhide-lashed shaft. “Without what you proved on the hillside with Kes six mornings ago, my channels wouldn’t even have known what question Daro’s blade was asking.”
