Melted rock waste Overseer Meng knelt in the cold gray ash, trembling so wildly that the bronze plates of his armor rattled against each other like loose teeth.
He was fully alone. His guards had fled, his smuggler allies had abandoned him. The two men standing before him—a seventeen-year-old youth with an empty dantian and a bronze-skinned giant—looked down at him with the cold, unrushed calm distance of executioners reviewing an open ledger.
A violent coughing fit seized Meng’s chest.
He doubled over, vomiting a pool of black, rotting blood that sizzled against the cold fiery melted rock waste. The liquid silver rot in his bone marrow had reached its critical gaining speed. His lips were turning blue, his fingertips numb and blackened by blood-vessel black rot. He had spent his life poisoning others for silver, and now the poison was consuming his own heart.
“Kill me...” Meng wheezed, his voice breaking into a wet, rattling gasp. “Go ahead... Strike with that iron bar... Let Elder Song have my head... It’s over...”
Lin Tao stepped down from the dark rock ledge, his boots crunching steadily over the loose stone until he halted three paces away.
“Your head is worth nothing to Elder Song, Overseer Meng,” Lin Tao said softly. “A dead overseer can’t clean bronze, and he can’t maintain the furnaces. A dead overseer is merely an office headache that needs fresh paperwork.”
Meng looked up through bloodshot, weeping eyes, stunned by the cold rationality of the boy’s words.
“You... You’ll not kill me?” Meng rasped, his cracked lips trembling.
“I’m a clerk, not a headsman,” Lin Tao replied. “You committed capital treason by manufacturing counterfeit pills and poisoning the water supply. But if you die today, the Upper Sect will dispatch a senior elder to investigate the disruption, and Pit Seven will be placed under martial quarantine.”
Lin Tao reached into his hemp tunic. Then he drew a small baked-clay phial containing two ounces of the purified Dragon-Marrow nectar.
He held the phial before Meng’s bulging eyes.
The warm, fragrant aroma of mountain honey and pine needles drifted from the stopper, instantly soothing the burning agony in Meng’s throat. The overseer’s breath hitched. He stared at the glowing amber liquid with the wild, pathetic hunger of a dying man in a desert.
“Dragon-Marrow nectar...” Meng whimpered, reaching out with trembling, soot-stained fingers. “Pure... Fully drossless... Give it to me... Please...”
Lin Tao pulled the phial back an inch, his voice dropping into an icy, iron-hard contract.
“This draught will halt the liquid silver black rot in your lungs for thirty days,” Lin Tao said. “It won’t cure your core—you’ll need six more doses over six months to fully purge the poison from your marrow. But it will allow you to breathe without coughing blood.”
Meng fell prostrate, pressing his forehead repeatedly into the cold dirt. “Anything! I’ll give you anything! Gold, silver, my spatial pouch—name your price!”
“I don’t want your dirty silver,” Lin Tao said. “I want the master bronze keys to the Central Smelting Pavilion. I want full office control of the scrap sorting yards. And from this day forward, every broken crucible that comes down the mountain belongs only to Pit Seven.”
“Granted! Take the keys! Take the yards!” Meng cried, wildly unclipping a heavy iron ring of twenty bronze keys from his belt and pushing them across the ash. “I’ll sign any report you write! I’ll tell the Upper Sect that Pit Seven has broken all historical production records!”
Lin Tao picked up the heavy ring of bronze keys. He tested their weight in his hand, before tossing the baked-clay phial onto the ground between Meng’s knees.
Meng snatched the phial with both hands, tore out the wax stopper with his teeth. Then he drank the amber liquid down to the last drop.
A long, shuddering gasp tore from the overseer’s throat.
The blue tint around his lips faded. The painful constriction in his chest relaxed, replaced by a deep, cooling relief as the bio-active extract flooded his damaged alveoli. For the first time in six months, Meng drew a full, silent breath without coughing a single drop of blood.
Lin Tao turned his back on the weeping overseer.
“Tie Shan,” Lin Tao said quietly.
“Here,” the giant rumbled.
“Take the keys,” Lin Tao instructed, handing him the heavy bronze ring. “It’s time to open the master gates of the volcano bowl.”
Tie Shan took the heavy iron ring, testing the twenty bronze keys in his massive palm. Each key was inscribed with the seal of the Azure Cloud Sect, cast from heavy star-iron to unlock the five grand vaults, the three fuel silos, and the central office archives of the Slag Pavilion.
Overseer Meng remained prostrate in the fiery dirt. He wept with wild, pathetic relief. The warm Dragon-Marrow extract surged through his rotting bronchi.
The overseer knew that he was no longer the master of the volcano bowl. He had become a hollow puppet, kept alive solely by thirty-day installments of Lin Tao’s medicine. He was bound to sign every ledger and authenticate every report that came from Pit Seven. But to a corrupt coward facing the rotting agony of Caldera Rot, slavery to a brilliant seventeen-year-old clerk was a thousand times sweeter than dying in a puddle of black blood.
Lin Tao stepped past the kneeling overseer. He walked toward the high dark rock rim overlooking the entire fiery basin.
Dawn had fully broken across the Azure Cloud Range. It burned through the purple chemical clouds to cast rays of pale gold light across the steaming melted rock waste heaps. Below him, three hundred debt-bound laborers were emerging from their soot-blackened huts. It held their shovels, looking toward Pit Seven with rising wonder.
Lin Tao drew a slow breath of the cold mountain air. His left collarbone was firm and painless, the hardened bone knitting tight under the nonstop nourishment of the Dragon-Marrow essence. Beside him, Tie Shan stood tall. He held his heavy iron bar with one hand. His bronze skin glowed in the morning sun like hardened star-copper.
The thirty-nine scavengers watching from the shadows of Pit Seven slowly crept out. It looked at Lin Tao with wide, shining eyes. They had seen their cruel overseer reduced to a weeping, prostrate dog, begging for drops of medicine from a seventeen-year-old laborer. They knew that something ancient and unstoppable had shifted in the balance of the volcano bowl.
Lin Tao raised his hand, signaling the scavengers to gather around.
“Clean the defile,” Lin Tao ordered quietly. “Stack the abandoned weapons in the tool shed. We have six hundred pounds of bronze to weigh before noon.”
The men cheered, scattering across the gravel to collect the spoils of their victory.
The first phase of the volcano bowl campaign was complete. The power had been seized. The supply line was secured. Now, it was time to rebuild the heavy-duty machinery of the mountain.