The water lapped against the pavers. It smelled of lightning, crushed fern stems, and rotten silt. There were fifteen paces of shallow water between the front rank and the edge of the plaza. Thirty-five paces farther on, two black obelisks rose thirty feet out of the mire. The stone between them had been swept bare.
Senior Brother Yan kept his broad sword raised. His blue sleeve was rolled to the elbow. Mud had dried on his bracer. He looked down the rows of forty-one shivering captives.
“Old Lu.”
A stooped man in a patched rat-pelt coat stiffened in the second row. He’d spent thirty years selling cheap fire talismans in the outer valleys. Layer Four was as far as years of bad pills and a little money for food had taken him. Now his jaw shook so hard his beard trembled.
“Senior Disciple. My legs. The leech poison has reached my knees. I can’t run.”
“You have two legs. Take that stake. Plant it five paces beyond the pillars and I’ll cut your debt in half.” The sect had put a fine for trespassing on Old Lu’s head when they took him. Yan treated the fine as a debt, with the promised wages meant to pay it off. “Wait three breaths and my blade takes your shins.”
