Pei Jing laid his old right forearm guard and a spare leather shell for the left arm on the stone table in Cell 114. They were made of sharkskin, lined with soft deerskin, and stiffened with strips of river iron. The right guard had been with him at Fort Ironpass and in the Black Marsh. Its twelve slots were worn. The leather had gone dark with sweat and oil.
Before he started, he sharpened the cleaver on the Black Mountain Whetstone. Forty strokes on one side and forty on the other. By the end his pulse had slowed to sixteen beats a minute. His fingers felt steady enough to work.
The needle that had killed the spider could take a charge again. The trouble was getting one into his hand when he needed it. He wanted to keep the needles apart so they wouldn’t scrape against one another and wake the runes.
He fitted a brass lining inside the spare left shell. Each of its thirty-six slots got its own ward to hold a needle apart from the others. A separate release mark told the magazine whether to bring one needle or a group to his palm. He packed the old right guard with its twelve slots still empty.
