The monument sank back into the yard as if it had never been there.
In its place, the stone under their feet split along a buried seam and opened into a wide ring covered in black sand and twelve iron posts.
On each post hung a necklace of dull bone beads, simple enough that a few heirs looked insulted.
Then the puppets stood up.
They had been lying under the sand like corpses that had not finished dying.
Wood and bone and dark metal, faces smooth, joints too precise.
Vael'Zira walked the rim of the ring.
"Second test. Physique Evaluation."
Someone in the ordinary line made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
"You will wear a Bone-Ward necklace," she said.
"It will not save you from pain. It will not save you from broken ribs, split skin, or the kind of bruise that stays in the marrow. It activates only if a blow would kill you. If the strike is merely trying to ruin you, the necklace stays quiet, and you take it."
A Nethar girl flexed her fingers.
