The wind that whistled through the high arches of the Crucible was colder now, stripped of all supernatural heat.
Down on the floor, the Man Who Returned slowly rose from the pool of spilled rainwater where Brother Ren had dissolved. His shoulders were bowed. But the vulnerability that had cracked his features during the Saint’s passing was already retreating behind the cold, glass armor of four hundred years. He bent down, picked up the jagged gold-silver metal mirror shard from the stones. Then he wiped the water from its surface against his thigh.
“One left,” the older man said, his voice flat, hollowed out, but deadly.
He didn’t look at Ren Prime, nor did he look at Mira. He looked up at the toppled marble top stone ledge sixty feet above. There, a grey-hooded figure huddled like a gargoyle.
“Ren-the-Cinder,” the Man Who Returned called out. “The coward from the burning citadel. The wretch who packed a sack of stolen coins, slipped through the sewer grates of Fort Karst while the civilian militia burned, and ran until his soles wore through to the bone.”
Up on the top stone ledge, the Coward flinched as if struck by a whip. His scuffed patchwork leathers creaked. The ring of sixteen brass skeleton keys at his belt chattered against the marble.
