Wuchen drew a narrow blade from the ledger’s spine and cut across Yan’s forearm. The wound opened through the earlier bandage. Yan stepped back and pressed the arm to his body long enough to slow the bleeding. His cultivation kept him standing, but the cut remained a real external wound.
Dalan left through the archive door with two copied pages. Wuchen sent an oath mark sliding after him. Yan had no projection in the hall now. He stepped in front of the mark and took its force across his ribs, then knocked Wuchen’s brush aside before it could make another stroke. The seal drove him against the desk. Pain pulled a short breath from him.
“Dalan has the copies,” Yan said. “You can’t call them lost.”
“He has no authority to preserve them.”
“He had the paper in front of him.”
Wuchen glanced toward the archive. “The provinces will return to chaos without one hand directing them.”
“A hand that can’t hear a local gauge isn’t directing anything.”
The western and northern command marks had dimmed. Their crews had kept their releases open, leaving Wuchen’s orders with fewer connected stations. The storm still threatened the outer walls; the river was high and the western node remained dark. But the ledger no longer reached every place it named.
