CLICK-CLACK-CLACK-DING!
Abacus Su’s fingers danced across his brass abacus so fast they left afterimages in the air. Standing on the iron catwalk beside Thermostat Pipe No. 3, he adjusted his round spectacles and held up a newly written pink invoice five feet long.
“Prisoner No. 700-001, Emissary Jin Huo,” Abacus Su read aloud in a crisp, cheerful voice. “After deducting the trade-in scrap value of your three dented Golden War-Chariots, three hundred bent fire-spears, and eighteen plucked three-legged soup-ducks—”
“Those are Royal Rank 7 Flaming Crows, not soup-ducks!” Jin Huo protested weakly from the floor, still clutching his scorched yellow ducky boxer shorts around his waist.
“—which Governor Hong Ling has generously appraised at fifty-one million seven hundred thousand Grain-Notes,” Abacus Su continued without missing a beat, “and after waiving the eight-hundred-billion historical boiler-sabotage fee pending your branch boss’s arrival, you and your three hundred subordinates still owe an immediate out-of-pocket balance of 80,000,000 Dry-Well Grain-Notes for scratching four yards of imported brass varnish on Pipe Number Three!”
Behind Jin Huo, Captain Huo Lie and the three hundred captured fire-guards huddled together in a giant Star-Iron cargo net, shivering in their wet underwear.
“Lord Emissary, what do we do?” Captain Huo Lie whispered via secret spiritual voice transmission so the Dry-Well villagers wouldn’t hear. “That one-armed old monster shook all our spatial rings out of our boots! How can we pay eighty million of their paper notes?”
