The object Voiceless Vaska Ren pointed to with his three-fingered left hand was easy to overlook amidst the massive wreckage of the three-ton bronze drum and the eighty-pound ground sockets. Set into a chiseled niche in the western granite wall just outside the mouth of the northern service passage, at shoulder height above the shelf where Seyun sat, was a four-inch-square backup test guide-rod. A fine china-and-copper relay box that linked the wall wiring of the lower seal court to the upper rim sensor.
Every main path had been cut. Because of that, the dying leftover charge of the upper rim was now trying to trickle down through the thin copper plates of that four-inch wall box, emitting a faint, rhythmic clicking sound like a beetle trapped inside dry wood—tick, tick, tick—as it searched for a path to restart the sixty-breath cycle.
Vaska tapped the stone wall six inches below the recessed copper box with his scarred knuckles, held up one finger to show it was the last live piece on the ridge. Then it stepped back to give Ilyra room on the narrow western ledge.
Ilyra stepped up beside the wall niche with her eighteen-inch broken marsh-iron spearhead in her right hand. She drew a breath and tried to summon a focused pulse of her Early Jade training into the iron point to shear the copper plates cleanly in two.
