Nobody brought out a prisoner in irons.
Three breaths after Arbiter Venn demanded custody of the Listening Crown anchor, the wooden door of the hospice kitchen opened and Nara Soth stepped out onto the porch in the morning sun. She wore a clean gray woolen coat buttoned loosely over the thick linen bandages Mina and Pera had wrapped across her back, her empty left sleeve pinned neatly to her breast. Her plain wooden walking staff held in her single right hand.
Crucially, as she walked down the three porch steps onto the gravel, she didn’t walk toward the stone table in the middle of the yard. Nor did Soran, Daro, and Ilyra shift their footing to form a protective ring around her.
Seyun watched her route and understood the choice right away. For twenty years inside the Hollow Summit—and for decades before that under the late Balance masters—every formation built around Nara Soth had placed her in the exact center of a circle, treating her body as the indispensable prize or shield around which everyone else organized their lines. Even a well-meaning defensive ring in this yard would have visually recreated the lattice she had bled to walk out of.
