With his left palm nailed hard to the smoking dark rock baseplate by the twisted bronze pipe rim-spike and only three breaths leftover before the split returning plane snapped back across the shelf, Vaska Ren saw Seyun turning back from the open hub hall to rescue him. Better than anyone on the mountain, the former Chief Judge knew the physical math of that bronze spike. It was wedged crookedly into a dovetailed dark rock wood slot beneath the live copper bus, and prying it upright with an ash staff would take at least three full breaths. Costing them the entire four-breath window and trapping both Seyun and Vaska in the open when the overhead blade arrived on Beat Four.
Vaska Ren had spent twenty years watching young fighters lose their lives and their freedom to the Aperture Court’s machinery. Meanwhile, he stood safe behind a desk with ten intact fingers. Six nights ago he had burned his own voice out at the lower shrine so Halin could walk away whole. Tonight, he had declared his own pullback mark on the fourth beat in front of the whole squad. He refused to let his pinned left hand turn Seyun into a captive rescuer a second time.
