Gold light struck the plateau thirty paces north of Pei Jing. The weight pressed the granite down into a perfect circle. The surface melted, then hardened into black glass.
A man ten feet tall stepped out of the light.
His armor was white gold from throat to heel. It moved with him without showing a strap or a rivet. Twelve disks spun behind his shoulders. Their runes turned at different speeds, giving off a thin, continuous whine. Where the visor should have been, there was an oval of dark so deep that none of the light touched it. Two blue points burned inside it.
Qi Shenxiao, Starry Arbiter of the Nine Heavens. The mark of the arbiter’s office turned inside the foremost disk. Pei Jing recognized it from the envoy’s seal. Under the mark, an account of prior assignments lit up as the disk turned. Eighty-four worlds closed. The entry for Enclosure 109 was still blank. The court had sent one man in a carriage to ask about the missing yield. This time it had sent the office that could take the world itself.
The glass hissed beneath his feet. Pei Jing watched the first cracks open toward the left heel. The Judge was carrying most of his weight on that side. His right leg was free to move. Even that armor had to rest its weight somewhere.
