Vault Three lay forty feet below the auction stage. The stone smelled of damp moss and cold iron. Copper bands marked with runes carried stray qi down toward the keel of the city. Lanterns set into the walls lit the granite without leaving shadows.
Master Feng Danding stood behind a round stone table. His white gloves looked clean, but there was sweat on the collar of his red robes. A hardwood chest with three locks sat in front of him. Two guards stood by the iron doors with poleaxes at their sides.
“Daoist Jing,” Feng said. He glanced at the door before he went on. “Sixteen hundred and fifty-six high-grade stones, after commission.” He set a smaller purse beside the chest. “Your fifty-stone deposit, returned in full.”
He took three brass keys from his sleeve. The locks opened one by one.
Blue light washed over the stone. One hundred and sixty-five cut gems lay in the felt lining, each worth ten standard high-grade stones. Six smaller stones made up the rest. A faint hum rose from the chest. Pei Jing could feel it along the hairs on his arms.
Feng looked from the gems to the worn cuffs of Pei Jing’s robe. “In two hundred years as assayer, I’ve seen pills from every great lineage in the Four Seas. We have nothing on your use of snow-bone ganoderma. Who taught you to keep it so pure?”
