Rain fell in greasy, cold sheets across Black Water County all afternoon.
It wasn’t clean rain. It carried the stench of the northern tanneries and the sulfur fumes of the lower canal water gates. That turned the dirt alleys of the Seventh Ward into knee-deep troughs of black mud.
In the southern lane, thirty pairs of iron-shod martial boots churned through the mire.
They marched in tight, aggressive ranks. Each man wore the black sleeveless tunic of the Iron Fist School, their bare arms corded with coarse sinew and scarred by iron-sand kettle training. In their fists, they carried five-foot iron-banded cudgels, heavy butcher hooks, and pitch-soaked torches wrapped in pig bladders to resist the damp.
At their head walked Master Tie Shan.
Tie Shan stood six feet and four inches tall, broad as a butcher’s chopping block. His sleeveless tiger-hide vest was soaked through with rainwater. But the heat streaming from his massive shoulders made the water turn to steam in thin, nonstop wisps of steam.
His knuckles—swollen to the size of walnuts from thirty years of pounding red-hot iron sand—clicked rhythmically as he bent his hands.
“Halt,” Tie Shan rumbled.
His voice cut through the drumming downpour with the heavy timbre of a bronze temple bell.
The thirty students froze, fanning out in a wide semicircle to block both exits of the narrow alleyway.
Ahead of them rose the gray brick outer edge wall of the Seventh Ward Mortuary.
The walls were topped with jagged shards of broken crockery embedded in lime to deter grave robbers. The heavy double gates, made of water-cured oak and heavy with iron strap-bands, were barred shut from within.
Above the top door beam hung a single wind-battered paper lantern, its pale yellow light lighting up the faded county seal: Seventh Mortuary. Peace to the Left.
“Surround the outer edge,” Tie Shan ordered, his small, pig-like eyes fixed on the heavy oak gates. “No one leaves. If a stray dog crawls out of a drain, snap its neck.”
“Yes, Master!” the students barked all at once.
Inside the dead-house courtyard, the sound of the shout was muffled by the thick stone walls. But the earth conveyed what the air couldn’t.
In the rear cold vault, thirty feet beneath the dead-house floorboards, Lu Chen sat cross-legged on a block of river ice.
He was stripped to his hemp trousers, his heavy oilcloth apron draped over a nearby cedar coffin.
Across his bare torso, the hardened melted rock waste-veins traced a fine, detailed, frightening network of black glass ridges. After the seventy-degree overclock against the Whispering Mirror, those veins had cracked like dry clay.
Now, lubricated by two pounds of rendered beef animal fat and salted sheep fat he had burned up three hours ago, the scorched vessels were slowly cooling, fusing back into solid, heat-resistant channels.
Beside his knee lay the heavy oilcloth bundle containing the five shattered fragments of the Whispering Bronze Mirror. Even wrapped in six layers of canvas, the cursed bronze gave off a faint, rhythmic pulse of Yin chill that his resting crucible continuously devoured.
The amber tracking data box hovered in his vision.
His eyes stayed closed. His breathing remained deep, slow, and measured, each breath out venting a thin jet of gray steam that vanished against the vaulted stone ceiling.
He felt the tremors through the bedrock.
Thirty-one distinct weight points, Lu Chen counted. Pacing indicates martial discipline. Average mass: one hundred and sixty pounds. Lead signed name: over two hundred and forty pounds. Iron Fist School.
He stayed seated.
Rushing before his backup spirit veins finished hardening would cause internal heavy bleeding. He drew another breath. That forced the dense animal fat calories deeper into his lower belly. That let the crucible simmer.
Up in the front dead-house hall, Doctor Bai was packing his instrument roll.
The old coroner adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. His yellowed fingers smelled of bitter pine-resin wax and vinegar. He puffed on his bitterleaf pipe, blowing a stream of blue smoke toward the row of shroud-covered corpses on the stone slabs.
“More trouble,” Doctor Bai wheezed, not looking up as heavy boots began kicking the outer courtyard gate. “That boy Lu Chen attracts corpses like rotten fish attract flies. I told the judge we needed thicker oak.”
Sitting by the fire bowl near the entrance was Old Meng.
The fifty-eight-year-old night watchman was running a greased cloth down the length of his iron-banded hickory heavy club.
His scarred right eye socket was hidden behind a square patch of boiled ox leather. His left knee, crippled twenty years ago by a nomadic horse-chopper on the Great Yong border, clicked as he pushed himself up from the wooden bench.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The outer gate shook wildly. The heavy iron latch rattled against its housing, raining flecks of rust down into the mud.
“Open the gate, dead-house dogs!” a harsh, arrogant voice screamed from the lane. “Iron Fist School business! Open up or we burn the timber!”
Doctor Bai didn’t even look up from his needle roll. “Don’t go out there, Old Meng. Tie Shan has fifty corrupt court guards in his pocket. If he kills you, the judge will call it a slip on the ice.”
Old Meng didn’t answer right away.
He reached into his greasy leather coat, pulled out his dented gourd of sulfur wine. Then he took a long, burning swallow.
He spat a mouthful of the red liquor into the dying charcoal of the fire bowl. The coals hissed, flaring with blue sulfur flame.
“My watch,” Old Meng rasped, his voice sounding like two river stones grinding together. “My gate.”
He picked up his dented brass night-patrol gong with his left hand. He tucked the heavy striker into his belt. Then he rested the iron-banded hickory heavy club on his right shoulder.
He limped across the stone threshold and stepped into the rain-drenched courtyard.
The downpour plastered his gray, thinning hair to his scalp. Rainwater streamed down the deep scars on his weathered cheeks, dripping from his bristly gray chin into his collar.
He walked with an uneven, heavy gait—step, drag, step, drag—until he stopped three paces short of the barred double gates.
Outside, the pounding paused.
“Who’s breathing inside?” Tie Shan’s deep voice boomed over the wall.
Old Meng planted the base of his hickory heavy club into the wet gravel.
“Seventh Ward,” Old Meng rasped, loud enough to cut through the rain. “Closed at dusk.”
A chorus of mocking laughter erupted from thirty throats beyond the wall.
“Listen to this old cripple!” a senior student jeered. “Hey, one-eyed dog! Go dig your own grave! Tell Lu Chen to drag his carcass out here with the bronze shards!”
Tie Shan’s heavy tread squelched in the mud as he stepped closer to the gate.
“Old watchman,” Tie Shan said, his tone deceptively conversational, like a butcher speaking to an ox before the mallet falls. “I don’t care about you. I care about the boy who crippled three of my students. I care about the cursed mirror he stole from West Street.”
Old Meng didn’t move. He stood in the mud, his scarred face expressionless under the dark sky.
“The mirror belongs to the Iron Fist School,” Tie Shan continued smoothly. “And Lu Chen’s two hands belong to me. Hand over the boy and the bronze. I’ll let you keep drinking your sulfur piss in this ditch.”
Old Meng reached down and tapped his hickory heavy club against his leather knee brace.
Clack.
“Morgue is county land,” Old Meng replied, his voice dead and flat. “No iron sand dogs allowed.”
There was a heartbeat of total silence in the alley.
Even the drumming of the rain seemed to quiet for a second as thirty martial artists absorbed the insult. In Black Water County, where merchants knelt in the mud just to offer Tie Shan protection money, no mortal spoke to the Hall Master with such contempt.
Beyond the gate, Tie Shan’s face darkened from bronze to a mottled, furious purple.
“Break it down,” Tie Shan snarled.
“Break it down!” the students roared.
Four burly students, their arms thick as young birch trees, stepped forward with two heavy iron-headed battering beams.
They took four running strides through the mud. They drove the iron rams straight into the center seam of the oak gates with crushing driving force.
CRACK!
The iron strap-bands groaned. A shower of oak splinters exploded into the dead-house courtyard.
The gate held, but the center crossbar bowed inward by two inches, the iron hinges shrieking against the stonework pillars.
Old Meng didn’t retreat a single step.
He raised his dented brass gong with his left hand and took the heavy striker in his right.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The piercing, brassy alarm of the Great Yong Night Watch rang out into the rainy dusk. It echoed across the rooftops of the Seventh Ward.
It was the signal for riot, for specter invasion, for county mobilization.
Yet across the darkened alleys of the Seventh Ward, not a single lantern lit up. Every window slammed shut. Every shopkeeper barred their shutters twice over.
In this county, when the Iron Fist School marched with torches, the law was deaf, blind, and dead.
“Nobody is coming to save you, old dog!” the lead student laughed wildly.
The battering beams drew back into the rain.
CRACK!
The second strike struck like thunder. The top hinge snapped clean off the stone pillar, the iron bolts ripping free in a spray of crumbled mortar.
The left gate sagged outward into the courtyard, hanging by a single strip of twisted metal.
Through the yawning gap, thirty pairs of savage, hungry eyes peered into the dim courtyard, the red glare of their torches reflecting in the muddy pools at Old Meng’s feet.
Tie Shan stepped into the breach, his massive frame blocking out the alley behind him.
In his right hand, he held an eight-foot iron-collared staff. His knuckles popped like snapping bones.
“Last chance to kneel, cripple,” Tie Shan growled.
Old Meng dropped the brass gong into the mud.
He gripped his hickory heavy club with both calloused hands, sank his good leg into the wet gravel. Then he spat a glob of bloody thick spit right onto Tie Shan’s tiger-skin boots.
“Come,” Old Meng said.