The halls of Entry hall 011 smelled of wet stone, crushed moss, and the coppery tang of drawn blood.
While Qiao Ming held the high nave of the Scroll hall, the lower tiers of the outer quarters had become a maze of desperate skirmishes. Driven by the panic of the put out cosmos, three hundred elite guards of the Jade Court—clad in lacquered brass armor and wielding curved flensing-scythes designed to strip spiritual marrow from living bones—had infiltrated the side rows of stone pillars, hunting for mortal thralls to fill their potion-made furnaces.
They moved with hungry speed, kicking open the wooden partitions of makeshift refugee camps, dragging screaming weavers and potters into the central aisle, binding their wrists with glowing magic charms of suppressive copper.
Yan Zhiqiu stood at the narrow intersection of the Ninth Sluice Alley. Her back was pressed against the fluted marble pilaster of an ancient grain-measuring niche. Her leather courier coat was cinched tight with two oiled rawhide belts. From her shoulders hung the heavy sling holding the Broken Slate.
Her dark eyes were narrowed, tracking the reflections of the brass guards in the shallow pools of salt water that covered the floor flags. She didn’t carry an iron sword. Following the ancient laws of the Hall, she had armed herself with weapons of stone and whalebone. A three-foot hooked harpoon carved from the stone-hard rib of a deep-sea cetacean, tipped with a blade of fiery black glass.
