Red brass plates lined Chamber Seven. A vent above the black glass table drew air hard enough to make the lantern flames lean. Pei Jing set his flask on the table and put his pack down by his feet.
He waited a long time. While the tower sorted out who would see him, he listened to the air move through the ward and studied the different instruments laid out for the test. Some were meant to read heat. Some would pick up what a pill gave off before it ever touched water. He wanted to know what each one could tell the people who would come after the medicine.
The iron door opened. Feng Danding walked in with two apprentices behind him. He had a thin face and the pinched look of a man who had spent a long time living on jade elixirs. Linked bronze cauldrons were stitched along the sleeves of his red and gold robe. They marked him as an Eighth-Tier Grand Assayer.
“A rogue gatherer and a mud jar during auction week,” he said. “If this is sheep dung covered in pine resin, the intake clerk can go shovel coal. Where’s the sample?”
An apprentice pointed to the flask. The other opened a felt-lined chest and took out a pair of gold tongs. The ends curved like an eagle’s claws. Feng pulled on ice-silk gloves before he took them. The tiny runes in the claws could read the balance of the elements in whatever they held.
