For five long heartbeats, a total, frozen stillness gripped the Grand Central Round hall.
Three thousand heavy legionnaires on the half-round tiers held their weapons in rigid confusion. He stared at the semi-clear azure mist that hovered over the High Dais. The clattering of the coal-shovels in the lower pits had ceased. The screech of the steam-lathes was silent. And the only movement in the vast tiered arena was the slow, upward drift of the salt water droplets rising from the great scroll.
The silence in the lower tiers had become unnatural. In the foundry pits, where three hundred enslaved smiths had hammered iron day and night under the lashes of the overseers, every hammer hung suspended in mid-air. The slaves, their bodies gaunt and covered with burns, looked up from their anvils toward the High Dais with hollow, questioning eyes. They could feel the shift in the air, the cold draft that smelled of rain and freedom, cutting through the rotten-egg smog that had suffocated them for two long winters.
Then, from the chest of the clockwork giant statue upon the dais, erupted a sound that shattered the quiet like an iron hammer smashing a brass gong.
Zhu Heling threw his head back and laughed.
