The small iron fire bowl in Sub-Basement Twelve crackled softly. It spat fragrant sparks of dried cedar shavings into the damp air of the bindery.
Brother Ren knelt on the cold flat stone slabs beside Mira’s stool, his raw, unwhitened burlap habit pooling in the stone dust. In his scarred, callused hands, he held a long strip of clean, boiled linen that had been steeped in an infusion of dried elder-flower and willow-bark. With infinite, trembling care, the Disgraced Saint wound the cloth around Mira’s right wrist, binding the seam where the living freckled skin met the faceted smoky quartz.
As the linen crossed her forearm, Brother Ren’s head bowed.
A single tear slipped from beneath his prematurely grey lashes. It fell onto the dark crystal with a tiny, stone hiss. Through the mental bond connecting the summons to Ren Vale’s chest, the Disgraced Saint’s agony throbbed like an open wound. The memory of seventy years spent in a drafty cell, coughing up black rotting thick spit. Meanwhile, his version of Mira sat across from him. He wept over the shattered ruin he had made of his own body.
“I could take it, little sister,” Brother Ren whispered, his voice cracking with unbearable, liturgical sorrow. “Even now... If the boy permits the osmosis... My ribs know how to mend around quartz. I could draw the crystal into my marrow before the fifth stage takes your breath.”
