Lu Chen stepped through the snapped bronze wreckage of the Meridian Gate, his boots crunching against crushed stone and twisted copper rivets.
Behind him, thin curls of white smoke rose from the cut gate leaves. There, his cleaver had split three-foot-thick bronze plates into cooling melted rock waste.
At the threshold, Blacksmith An Ni stood beside the draft wagon, resting both calloused hands upon the hickory wooden handle of her cold-iron sledgehammer.
“Watch the rear,” Lu Chen said, not looking back.
“Wagon is braced,” An Ni replied, her voice gravelly and even. “Break the bridge.”
Lu Chen nodded once and walked out onto the vast expanse of the outer court.
Before him stretched a square of dressed white granite, five hundred paces wide. It was flanked by towering vermilion walls topped with royal yellow-glazed tiles.
The courtyard was deserted, yet thick with the unnatural stillness that preceded an execution.
