Because the seventh blade had been wrenched sideways out of its upright groove while still coupled to the upper spindle, the easternmost socket of Heaven’s Measure didn’t close cleanly on the fourth breath.
Thirty zhang above the shelf. There, the eighth rib of the collapsed octagon was drawing back to reset the outer ring, a three-yard section of the cultivated sky-slit rim hung open and crooked against the grey sky. Its bronze-white shape warbled like a wagon wheel whose iron tire had been pried loose by a crowbar on a rocky road.
Inside the recess doorway, Hall Mistress Soran tore the remainder of the linen strip from Keth Or’s fingers with her teeth, tied off the cedar splint on her right wrist with a single tug against her chin. Then she snatched up her bent iron spear from the floor. Before she could even plant her boot on the threshold, however, Nara Soth’s voice rang back into the shelter like a bronze bell struck with a hammer.
“Hold the doorway, Soran! Seyun—give me the fault line!”
Blood was soaking rapidly through the torn back of Nara’s grey wool coat. It steamed in the freezing air where the slanted gash crossed three of her old dorsal scars. In any ordinary fight, a deep cut across the back of the torso would have cut the upward flow of breath from the kidneys to the shoulder gate, collapsing a Listening Crown fighter’s stance right away.
