The overseer never saw the shadow that fell from the steam pipes.
As his knuckles gripped the cold iron dog-bolt of the master deadbolt, Yan Zhiqiu struck. She didn’t waste energy on a martial flourish or a vocal challenge. She dropped twelve feet through the rotten-egg smoke, the lower corner of the pre-flood Broken Slate leading like a falling anvil.
CRACK.
The dense hadal stone struck the base of the overseer’s neck with brutal, razor-sharp care.
The man’s spine cut instantly beneath his silk collar. Without a groan or an intake of breath, his fingers opened, the heavy iron gig clattering into the oily bilge water, followed by the limp sack of his body. He collapsed face-down into the three-inch pool of cooling cooled water, motionless.
Yan Zhiqiu’s bare feet splashed into the water beside him.
She snatched the heavy iron ring of brass keys from his belt before the ripples from his fall could reach the cage bars.
Inside the first iron pen, sixty pairs of scared eyes stared out at her through the gloom. A young mother, her lips cracked with fever, drew her five-year-old boy behind her tattered hemp shawl. It trembled in silent terror, expecting another torture session or the arrival of the marrow-cannulas.
