The Judge lowered the halberd. Dust from the ridge was still settling in the pines.
“Give your core and soul to the tablet,” it said. “I’ll let the people keep sixty percent of their life force.”
Pei Jing remembered a clerk on the Cloudford dock. The clerk had tapped the bottom of a full basket until the grain settled, then made the farmer fill it again from the sack he meant to take home. He could still see the man’s hand going into the sack.
“Will you ask the people who have to give it?”
The Judge held out its hand. It had made the offer to the one person standing in front of it and expected him to answer for the rest.
Pei Jing lifted the speaking stone from his belt. The shelter below had heard the offer. He let the line stay open. There was a scrape, then a woman’s voice.
“I’ve got three people here who can’t breathe without a ward. Which forty percent would you like me to give you?”
He knew Sister Yu’s voice. She had come up the road with the worst of the patients when the first shelter filled. He could hear someone counting breaths beside her.
