Seyun tried to rise from the western granite shelf on his own. Then, his body delivered the honest bill for four watches of nonstop climbing and close-range combat all at once. The twelve linen stitches Mina had sewn across his left calf after the second watch pulled tight over muscle fibers that had zero stored energy or cultivated warmth left in them. The out-of-joint left humeral head shifted painfully against his anterior joint capsule inside the sling. And his central spirit vein trunk was so thoroughly empty after the four-breath strike that the stone shelf seemed to tilt forty degrees beneath his boots.
His left knee gave way fully before he was halfway upright, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead as his vision greyed at the edges.
He never touched the stone. On his uninjured right side, Ilyra dropped her shoulder smoothly under his right armpit. She wrapped her right arm across his back to lock his hip against hers. Meanwhile, her left hand steadied his braced right forearm.
Two seconds later, Daro Kesh reached the shelf from the center of the court, stepped in on Seyun’s injured left side—careful not to jar the out-of-joint left shoulder in its linen sling—and braced his own left forearm behind Seyun’s lower back and left hip to take the weight off the stitched left calf.
