Even in his madness, the Scholar kept the instincts of a royal diplomat.
Ji Mingchuan did not right away strike with the golden metal pen. Seeing Qiao Ming standing balanced upon the threshold flags, with the sixty-fathom sounding line coiled and the green rust bone-awl leveled at his throat, the Scholar slowly lowered his boot from Master Lu’s knee.
He forced his trembling mouth into a sickening, ingratiating smile.
“Caspian,” the Scholar began, his voice taking on the sweet, oily modulation of an elder addressing a favored student. “Wait. Do not be hasty. Let us speak as reasonable men who understand the value of labor.”
He stepped down from the stone stand, resting his weight upon his uninjured leg. His hands were held open before his chest in a stance of peaceful negotiation. In his left palm, gleaming against his stained spider-silk sleeve, sat a flat plaque of pale mutton-fat jade.
The plaque was five inches long, carved in the form of a soaring sky crane, inlaid with fine gold wire that spelled out the royal characters of the Cloud Peak Scroll hall:
GRAND Master builder OF THE Starry EXODUS.
“Look at this token, Caspian,” Ji Mingchuan whispered, extending the jade plaque toward the land-mapper. “This is not scrap iron. This is the highest civil commission of the Nine Great Sects. It confers total power over three thousand master craftsmen, twelve floating dockyards, and sixty void-dreadnoughts.”
