The eighty river hired blades poured through the shattered air-flow chimney pipes like a swarm of black hornets boiling out of a cracked nest.
They were hardened killers from the southern marshes. Men who had survived decades of river piracy, border wars, and gang conflicts along the untamed reaches of the Heavenly River. They wore heavy coats of boiled alligator hide lined with star-iron plates, their faces hidden behind greased leather masks smeared with charcoal and lard. In their hands, they carried serrated black-steel scimitars, barbed boarding pikes, and baked-clay jars of acid-burning potion-made acid that hissed with noxious green fumes.
“Kill the boy!” their commander roared, a scarred Foundation Establishment brute wielding a heavy two-handed headsman axe. “Guild Master Jin will pay ten thousand silver for his head! Ten thousand silver and a share of the river tolls!”
The eighty killers surged across the black green jade floor of the grand foyer. Their boots splashed through pools of spilled lamp oil and river water, charging toward the grand hardwood stairs that led to the upper vaults. Their war cries were ear-splitting, a chaotic chorus of bloodlust amplified by the soaring nine-story atrium.
Standing at the base of that stairs was a single man.
