The upper narrow high walkway beneath the pulsating gold-silver metal core was a three-foot-wide iron grating suspended fifty feet above the basin floor.
Diplomat Ren landed on the iron grid with the light, balanced poise of a master fencer, his gold-silver metal dress sword held in a low, slanted guard. The radiant violet heat from the core scorched his white linen collar. But his slate-grey eyes were steady. He watched Arch-Restorer Malichor advance with the heavy, high-pressure tread of a clockwork golem.
The narrow high walkway swayed sickeningly fifty feet above the churn of the pool floor.
Arch-Restorer Malichor advanced with terrifying clockwork speed, the brass pistons along his thighs hissing as they propelled his three-hundred-pound frame forward. From his left wrist, an air-powered drill-tip snapped into place, three fluted hardened carbon-iron flutes spinning at four thousand rotations per minute with a shriek that set Ren’s teeth on edge.
“You speak of taxes, Judge!” Malichor screamed, thrusting the spinning drill straight at Diplomat Ren’s chest. “In the plague winter, they taxed the firewood! They taxed the animal fat candles we needed to wash our children’s corpses! Your law is a parasite that eats the marrow of the poor!”
Diplomat Ren didn’t flinch. He didn’t yield a single inch of the narrow walkway.
