On the third breath, Heaven’s Measure stopped dropping its blades in even pairs.
Having failed to crush Nara Soth with the first four ribs of the collapsed octagon, the central spindle thirty zhang overhead spun half a turn counterclockwise and released the fifth, sixth, and seventh blades in a staggered, overlapping shear. Two of the blades angled low toward Ilyra’s knees beside the second cairn to pin her short spear down. Meanwhile, the seventh blade—thinner and faster than the others, sharpened to a semi-clear grey line—dropped vertically behind Nara’s right shoulder toward the blind spot on her left side.
It was a cold, clockwork exploitation of her missing left arm. To keep her palm-pulse angled against the eastern chute where the fifth and sixth blades were coming in, Nara had to keep her right shoulder turned forward. She had no left hand to bring across her spine. The hardened scars from the old Ash Wars across her upper back slowed the rotation of her torso by a critical quarter-breath.
“Nara—behind your left shoulder!” Daro Kesh roared from the northern door post of the recess, half-lunging toward the threshold with his heavy iron sword raised before Keth Or caught his belt to keep him from crossing the boundary peg and bringing the rest of the wheel down on the roof.
