The morning fog hanging over the country highway tasted of cold river silt and wet mule leather.
Lin Ke leaned against the wooden shaft of a two-wheeled handcart, his face caked with charcoal grease and his clothes soaked through with freezing drizzle. He looked like every other indentured coal-carter who had ever hauled melted rock waste from the Seventh Ward down to the country weighing station. Hunched spine, downcast eyes, and a burlap sack draped over his head against the damp.
Fifty paces ahead, the royal supply convoy stood locked in the cobblestone bottleneck outside the Provincial Customs Gate.
In the center of the column sat the armored carriage. It was built from iron-heavy cypress timbers, plated with lead sheeting to block spiritual fortune-telling, and drawn by four six-legged scales-oxen whose nostrils snorted clouds of greasy white steam.
Riding at the head of the calm distance was Vice-Inquisitor Kuang Yan.
The man was a Half-Step Golden Core terror. Six and a half feet of knotted muscle wrapped in lacquered black iron armor, a five-foot serrated execution broadsword resting across his saddle bow. His gaze swept across the crowded thoroughfare with the contemptuous malice of a hunting beast inspecting sheep in a holding pen.
