Ducking beneath the cracking dark rock lip of the recess while white light flooded the trough outside, Seyun didn’t plant his boots in front of Nara Soth and Hall Mistress Soran as if they were sacks of winter grain he had to die standing over. Four mornings ago on the hillside below the village, when Nara had drilled him with a plain staff using only late Bronze pressure, she had repeatedly struck the exact spot where he assumed a retreating partner ought to stand. Forcing him to admit that his protective instinct still secretly treated other people as fixed markers in his own plan. Then, in the dark courtyard with Kes and Pera, and again under Daro’s short sword while Mina and Halin carried supply baskets through the seal court, he had learned that a living defense begins by verifying what the defended person is actually choosing to do.
Granite dust and small stone chips pattered across Seyun’s shoulders as he dropped to one knee beside Nara Soth at the rear of the cleft. Across Nara’s shoulders, Hall Mistress Soran’s torn sash was knotted tightly over the deep blade cut she had taken in the third watch. Just then, she refused the Listening Crown lattice and cut the narrow section of the outer sky-slit rim. Nara’s face was pale under her white hair, her empty left sleeve pinned flat against her coat. Her single right palm pressed against the cold slate floor to steady her torso against the tremor of…
