Seyun was sitting on the top step of the hospice porch between Mina and Daro Kesh’s propped stool. Just then, the six figures and their pack mule emerged from the twilight pines at the bend of the road.
Even before they reached the lantern light at the gate, every fighter and patient in the yard could read the stance of their return. Nobody was being carried on a litter. No weapon was drawn. And the mule stepped over the log threshold. Then, its canvas panniers clanked with the flat, loose rattle of broken bronze castings knocking together like old farm tools. Around the yard, Halin stopped sweeping the flat stone slabs, Pera set down her water bucket beside Senn’s bench. The other freed testers gathered quietly along the porch rail.
Before reporting to the wider yard, Ilyra walked straight across the gravel to the porch steps, unfastened her belt pouch. Then she placed a heavy, palm-sized triangle of dark metal into Seyun’s uninjured right hand.
Seyun looked down at the piece in the warm yellow light of the porch lantern.
Along its outer curve, the metal still bore the smooth, lathe-turned edge of the lower returning hub’s inner collar. The ancient ring whose pressure on the first breath had demanded a single, permanent commitment so the turning blades could classify and cut him down. Along the inner face ran a clean, angled shear that turned sharply across the grain where Vaska’s iron wedge had exposed the test joint and where…
