For three full turns of the thirty-breath sand-glass, Mina kept her fingers on Seyun’s right wrist, shifting her thumb once to check the pulse point below his right collarbone where Daro Kesh’s second mark rested. When she finally lifted her hand. Then she opened the old Ash Reed Account Book she had kept safe on the hospice shelf since the night of the assault, her diagnosis matched the rawness behind his ribs.
“Your Early Jade hasn’t collapsed,” Mina said, writing the figures in neat, cramped ink along the lower margin of his ledger page. “The load-bearing turn you earned in the seal court is still there. Inside the vessel walls, however, the inward return paths from your left palm to your chest bone are blistered like skin held too close to a forge grate. If you circulate Jade—or even gather a finger’s width of Flame to warm your hands—before the inner lining sheds its heat, the scar tissue will bridge across the narrowest bends and close them permanently.”
She bound a second linen strap horizontally around his chest and slung left arm so he couldn’t unconsciously raise the elbow in his sleep. “Five days of complete spirit vein rest. Ordinary breathing only. If I catch you testing whether the Answering Edge still answers, I’ll have Bel Sar sit on your chest until the week is out.”
