The horn in Box Thirty-Seven went quiet. The number seemed to hang in the air. Eight hundred high-grade stones. A bid three hundred above the last one, all at once. An old merchant near the front dropped his counting rods and let them roll under the bench.
In Box Five, Wu gripped the wheels of his chair. Dark fog curled around his arms.
“He sold the pills,” Wu said. “And now he’s putting the money on that?”
He lifted his ivory tablet and looked at his chief student. The student kept his eyes on the floor. To bid again, the hall would have to draw on the reserves it kept for its burial grounds in the south. Even if the slab could be smelted, Wu might be dead before he had anything to show for it.
He dropped the ivory tablet in his lap and folded his arms.
Beitang was still at the rail in Box One. He watched the shadows behind the quartz of Box Thirty-Seven. The man in there had taken five hundred and fifty stones from his family for ten pills. Now he could use some of those very stones to take the last lot.
“Nine hundred high-grade spirit stones,” Beitang shouted.
