Even when a fighter recognizes the hook inside the bait, three hundred years of habit don’t uncoil from the spine in a single breath.
Above the northern ridge, the eight-sided lattice tilted downward by three degrees. As it tilted, the eight silver spokes tightened toward the center hub with a low, grinding hum that made the frost on the outer shelf jump half an inch off the stone. The rig was no longer waiting passively for an answer. Its internal balance weight had reached the end of its pause interval. Either the Listening Crown vessel stepped into the dry six-foot circle within the next five breaths, or the eight ribs would snap shut across the mouth of the recess at once.
Inside the shelter, Seyun’s knees buckled half an inch as the downward pull on his collarbones doubled in a single heartbeat. A thin trickle of dark blood ran from his left nostril onto his upper lip. Vaska Ren had to brace his sound right hand against the young man’s shoulder blade to keep him from pitching forward across the iron boundary peg.
“The pause is ending!” Bel Sar warned from the left door post, his ash staff humming in his bruised grip as static crawled in blue sparks along the charred wood. “It’s drawing the ring tight!”
