Back at the pear-wood frame stand table on the pass road, Lord Scribe Wu had reached the stage of office tiredness.
The royal official sat on an upturned wooden water bucket, his silk sleeves rolled up to his bony elbows, his damask robes thoroughly ruined by clay, ash, and engine cooled water. Before him lay the smoking leftovers of the Great Tax Scroll. Every page, every margin, and every nested seal had fused into a solid, glass-fused mass of black glass and charred gold thread.
Beside the table, four junior scribes were quietly packing their scroll trunks, carefully wrapping their unused brushes in silk cloths with the solemn respect of priests preparing for a funeral.
“There’s no counter-formula,” Scribe Wu whispered into his tea bowl, his voice hollow and devoid of emotion. “The Grand High judge will ask for the receipts. I’ll have to hand him twenty pounds of black glass and tell him the Southern Basin owes eight million stones to an empty hole in the earth.”
Lin Tao walked over to the table, holding Tie Shan’s clay canteen of boiled mountain spring water.
He reached into his satchel, drew out a clean fine china cup, poured three fingers of cold water. Then he set it on the wood before the broken scribe.
