Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 2 · the sixth life: the east stair at Ashaw, his fourteenth year
The blade came down on the rail, and the iron took it.
Adeyn’s palm was still flat on the bar when the stroke landed. The bar rang under the edge with one clean note that ran up the stair and came back off the stone, and the blade skidded along the iron instead of biting into the boy behind it. It didn’t skid far. The edge went across his palm from the heel to the root of the first finger, and the cut was hot before it was painful.
He didn’t let go of the rail. His right hand came free, caught the man’s wrist above the inked bowl, and turned it up to the grey light. The fingers opened. The short knife clattered on the step and slid off the edge into the drain. The man looked down at his own wrist as though he had only now been shown what he carried there.
He wrenched the arm back and said nothing. He ran across the yard with his river-coat flapping about his knees and went out through the side gate, and the gate banged against its post, swung, and banged again. On the school roof a second man whistled two notes. The whistle stopped short, and after it there was only the gate, and the swallows going up off the wall all at once in…
