Ten paces before the raised throne of cast brass, Qiao Ming came to a final, unmoving halt. His bare calloused feet rested flat upon the lapis lazuli stars of the ancient floor, his grey linen tunic hanging straight and still in the swirling draft of the fire.
Above him, seated upon his throne of cut sect tablets, rose Zhu Heling.
The Scholar looked down from his six-arm-length height with a mixture of hungry amusement and wild, restless hunger. He was no longer the scholarly ascetic who had once studied the aquatic sutras in the quiet alcoves of the Grand Scroll hall. He was a clockwork giant statue nine feet in height, his broad chest plated in cold-rolled black steel, his shoulders laced with exposed copper steam-drain tubes that puffed white vapor with every stroke of his internal engine.
Inside his open chest sky-slit, behind a circular lens of thick, leaded crystal, the heart of the Scholar was visible in all its ugly complexity. Three hundred care brass cogwheels, tiny as watch-gears and large as millstones, turned in wild, linked cycles. In the center of that clockwork maze, suspended upon a diamond pivot, spun the master balance-wheel of silver and cold-iron, ticking with a rapid, metal chatter that sounded like a beetle burrowing through dry wood.
