Four nights after the northern assault, in the deep stillness between midnight and the fifth dawn, Seyun woke all at once with a heavy, rhythmic pressure pressing against the back of his breastbone.
The ward around him was dark save for one trimmed animal fat lamp burning beside the medicine table near the door. On the next cot, Daro Kesh breathed in slow, regular snores with his braced leg propped on a folded sack. Further down the wall, Halin and Senn slept without the timed together four-breath twitch that had haunted the summit beds. Yet inside Seyun’s own chest, the inward return channels connecting his left collarbone, his right collarbone. The closed scar beneath his chest bone felt suddenly tight and full, as if a delayed shock from the northern hub or an unscheduled echo were pushing against a narrowed gate.
Slowly, so the straw mattress wouldn’t rustle, Seyun pushed himself upright with his uninjured right hand. Then he sat on the edge of the cot frame. His heart beat a little faster against his ribs. For eleven years at the Ash Reed Sect—every winter morning when he woke in the outer bunkhouse wondering if his inward channels had closed even tighter—and through every week of flight along the burial road and the Hollow Summit, his body had known only one response to uncertainty: test it right away.
