Cold river mud and old soot seasoned the midnight rain drumming down over Gu Ning.
Water drummed against the black dark rock paving stones of the South Postern Causeway. It pooled in the deep cart ruts worn into the granite by hundreds of years of grain tax caravans.
Through the curtain of downpour came the heavy, rhythmic iron-shod clatter of six draft horses driven hard against the curfew.
Guild Master Cao sat inside the heavy river freight wagon, his pudgy knuckles white as lard as he clutched the brass carriage rail.
The wagon was built like a siege tower on wheels.
Its oak hull was armored with three-quarter-inch boiler plate. Its heavy iron axles groaned beneath the dead weight of four iron-banded chests bolted directly to the carriage floor.
Each chest held three thousand coins of stamped royal gold bullion and refined sycee silver.
It was the piled up marrow of the Water Freight Guild. Stolen surcharges, forged canal tolls. The blood money paid for forty vanished refugee barges over three years.
