With the terror of immediate death removed, the lifelong training of the Yan-Luo Imperial Archive asserted its complete dominance over Yan Zhiqiu’s mind.
An scroll-keeper did not daydream; a scroll-keeper audited.
She handed the heavy lead line-weight back to Qiao Ming with a formal, two-handed gesture of respect, bowing her head by exactly three inches. The greeting accorded to an independent scholar of equal rank in the third court of the capital.
Qiao Ming received the weight with a nod, returning it to the peg on his leather harness with unrushed grace.
Yan Zhiqiu drew the dark stone tablet from beneath her coarse hemp tunic and laid it flat upon her lap.
Her breath hitched slightly as her fingers traced its borders. For twelve hours of fever and delirium, her body had held the relic in an iron grip, fearing every second that it would be stolen, fractured, or seized by sect judges. Now, in the warm, dry light of the salt-kiln, she could examine what had survived the crossing.
The tablet was eleven point four cun in length and eight point six cun wide, carved from dense, hardened black shale quarried from the deepest foundations of the Imperial Spire. Three of its edges were raw, jagged fractures, white with the impact of the iron sledgehammer her master had swung against the master stele. The fourth edge was finished with exquisite, royal care, beveled and bordered by a running frieze of coiled sea-dragons chasing a flaming pearl.
