Through the sewer tunnel drifted the stench of crushed teeth, burnt iron, and scorched marrow.
Song Chen sat slumped in the black drainage sludge, his back propped against the crumbling brickwork. His elegant azure silk robes were soaked with foul water and mottled with thick, curdled ribbons of his own blood.
His lower face was an unrecognizable ruin.
Where his lips and teeth had been, there was only a ragged crater of crushed flesh and exposed jawbone. Two white splinters of the shattered bone flute protruded from his left cheekbone like quills, weeping dark, foul-smelling marrow.
His breath came in wet, gargling wheezes—huff... Gock... Huff—as blood drained backward into his throat pipe.
Ten paces away, the second guard was wildly clawing his way through the rubble.
The brute’s earwax seals had blown out during the sound crash, leaving him half-blind and fully deafened. Bleeding heavily from his ears and nose, he hauled his bulk toward the collapsed water gate, his fingernails breaking against the slimy granite as he tried to drag himself into the dark.
Without glancing at Song Chen, Lu Chen kept his focus ahead.
