Lin Ke didn’t kneel.
He didn’t even drop his gaze. He simply stood beside the heavy bronze table. He drew a spool of boiled linen from his inner coat pocket and wrapped a tight strip around his blistered thumb with clockwork deliberation.
The sheep grease sizzled against the raw deep skin. It filled the damp interrogation cell with the sour stench of scorched wool-grease and blistered skin. Every tug of the cloth sent a razor-sharp shiver through his outward glass channel. But his pulse never wavered from its clockwork sixty beats per minute.
“You have five breaths,” Yan Tiexin warned, his amber eyes narrowing to vicious slits. “Four.”
Elder Wu let out a high-pitched squeak from the doorway, his fat hands fluttering wildly over his satchel of tax codes.
“Lin Ke! Boy! Kneel!” the office elder wheezed, his gray silk sleeves flapping like distressed goose wings. “Recite the fire ratios! We can file an emergency exemption under Subsection Nine—Educational Metallurgy Waiver! If you draw blood in this office, the Imperial Revenue Board freezes my pension vouchers for forty-eight lunar cycles!”
Lin Ke tied the linen knot with his teeth, pulled it taut, and looked up at the Judge.
“The metalworking ratios are recorded in the ward’s annual production manifest, Section Three,” Lin Ke said. His voice flat as were cold slate. “The books are open to public check at the outer gatehouse.”
