The broken shaft had barely stopped rolling when Qi Shenxiao reached into the fold at his hip.
The Order-of-Heaven Tablet came out in his left hand. Without the halo of light around it, the jade was only eighteen inches long and six inches wide. Thirty-six rings of fine gold script lay within its frame. Three of the old marks were black where Pei Jing’s counter-note had burned them. A red seal still shone at the center.
The first command had tried to open the mountain and draw up its power. The red seal could still turn every iron pin in the mantle against the ground it held. The continents would fold inward, and the rift would take what came up. To the court it would be a way to recover most of the value of a world that had stopped paying.
“If this world refuses the harvest,” the Judge said, “we’ll reclaim it as slag.”
His thumb moved toward the seal.
Pei Jing let the Astral Bone Blade drop. The point bit into the black glass and stayed upright. Six paces lay between him and the tablet. He drove off the seam. The note he had held all day failed. He had to reach the tablet before either command could reach the pins.
