Halin didn’t touch the dark bronze needle lying on the map stone, yet his hands didn’t shake as he pointed one clean, ink-stained forefinger at the tiny bright wear-scar polished into the upper corner of the third locking notch.
Around the granite table, the senior fighters paused.
In the Chartered Houses or at the Aperture Court’s war councils, a sixteen-year-old former captive with Coal-level channels who interrupted a strategic briefing between Jade and Crown masters five minutes before an assault would have been told to go back to the kitchen and boil bandages. Here in the seal court, Hall Mistress Soran right away turned her head so the lantern light fell across Halin’s lips, Daro Kesh leaned half a step closer to the stone. Vaska Ren held his chalk pencil poised above the timing chart.
“Look at the chalk numbers Master Vaska wrote beside the four-beat alternation,” Halin said, his voice steady in the cold night air—the same clear voice he had claimed in the northern chamber three weeks ago when he spoke his younger sister’s name aloud under Reth Mal’s blade ring. “On the chart, you have the hub drawing inward for four even beats—One, Two, Three, Four—and then reversing right away on Beat Five to release the returning plane down the conducting seam.”
