The iron stake weighed twenty-one pounds. The Cloud Mist disciple dropped it into Pei Jing’s hands. The pitted surface bit against his calluses.
“Don’t drop it. The rebound will snap your shins before the blades get to you.”
Pei Jing wiped a streak of mud over his forehead and let his mouth hang open. A man who looked too sharp would make the disciples wary. A scared fool who did as he was told could pass without a second glance.
He splashed through the last of the mire and stepped onto the dry slate. Through his boot he felt the old ward humming. Old Lu’s body lay near the pillars. One severed foot lay in the left gutter. His lower body was still on the slate.
Pei Jing took a shuddering breath for the thirty-nine rogues and the three disciples watching him. He found the woman who had spoken up when Bian died. She had pulled the people nearest her back from the broken paving. When Jing looked her way, she pointed with two fingers at the lane he’d told her to avoid. She wanted him to know she was still watching.
The plaza was thirty paces wide. Copper lines beneath the pavers led from the earth vein to the obelisks. Step on a live stone and the current went through. He’d seen four dead stones. The first carried a green streak of copper slag. The one at eighteen paces had sunk on a broken corner. The one at twenty-nine…
