The ivory tally board in Zhu Heling’s hands clicked with a dry, insectoid rhythm that carried down the vaulted hall like the tapping of a beetle inside dry coffin-wood.
Every time the Scholar pushed a counting-bead along its bronze wire, a tiny puff of yellow chalk-dust drifted from his fingertips. He had set up his portable writing-desk in the center of Entry hall 505, directly upon the eight-sided mosaic medallion that depicted the sky river dividing the mortal world from the ancient deep. The desk was crafted from dark bitter pine-resin wood, lined with velvet compartments to hold his potion-made weights, his horn phials of acid, and his ledger rolls of treated lambskin. On the polished rosewood corner rested his golden scribe’s measuring tongs, its delicate needle-legs stained with dried red stone and the greasy residues of dissolved stone marrow.
Around the desk stood four armored bodyguards from the Iron Claw Brigade. Their broad-bladed glaives were held vertically, their breath wheezing through the charcoal canisters of their respirators. They stood like iron towers, indifferent to the beauty of the surrounding murals. Their eyes scanning the was dark archways with the blank, hungry vigilance of hired blades hired for slaughter.
“One core of the Third Rank,” Zhu Heling dictated, his voice cold, clipped, and devoid of tremor. His golden metal pen scratched rapid cursive characters into the margin of the lambskin scroll. “Water-mapping holding power: eighty-two percent. Purity index: nine parts in ten. When smelted with sulfur and crushed dragon-bone, it…
