The black poison hissed through the morning air like striking vipers.
Three feet from the cedar window slit, the lead assassin’s twin daggers descended with bone-crushing momentum. His Jade Meridian Mid blood-Qi burned along the curved iron gutters, whistling with savage thirst.
Behind the command wagon, Deacon Lucius Vane pressed his back against the limestone pillar.
He wrapped his thick wool coat around the cracked bronze tablet, shielding the imperial metal with his own flesh.
His fingers traced the jagged scratches across the tablet’s reverse side.
In the pale morning light filtering through the cedars, fine imperial runes emerged from beneath the dried arterial blood.
It was the secret cipher of the Iron-Crown Censorate.
Vane pulled a sheet of dry mulberry paper and a flat stick of charcoal from his pocket. Pressing the paper against the bronze surface, he rubbed the charcoal across the metal in firm, even strokes.
