Off the high granite crags, the morning wind bit like an iron razor. It tore through the cedar slats of the Seventh Ward’s backup post.
Two thousand paces below, the Cangwu River wound through the lower water-slums like a ribbon of gray slate. Down there, half a million refugees huddled in sodden reed huts, boiling dried canal weeds and nursing frostbitten heels against the winter damp.
Up here, the Great Vermilion Ascendant Stairs rose in nine hundred steps of polished white mountain marble.
Lu Chen climbed without breaking stride.
Every ten paces, bronze tripods the size of wine vats burned seasoned red sandalwood, mountain bitter pine-resin, and dried clove roots. Thick curls of fragrant white incense billowed into the cold air. He drifted across the tiered pavilions and swept roof edges of Gu Ning’s patrician quarter.
The rich perfume smelled clean to common noses.
To Lu Chen’s test senses, the incense was a bandage laid over a festering wound. Beneath the spiced cloves and sweet resin, his smell nerves registered the faint, greasy musk of embalming pitch and desiccated marrow. The clear signed name of hidden corpse-grafts.
The grand families of the Upper Citadel bathed in sandalwood to mask the rot in their basements.
