The bronze vats were boiling down below, stripping away whatever remained of Cui Heng's hesitation. He stared at Master Yaoquan, whose stained face jerked in panic, pinned to the timbers by his own snapped blade. The roar of the cascade seemed to amplify the overseer's shrill wheezing, wind lashing loose hair across his cheeks.
“The lowest vats?” Su Linyin’s voice was sharp, cutting through the spray. “The iron cauldrons at the base of the Pillar of Sighs? They started without an official decree?”
Yaoquan nodded, chin shuddering against his collar. “They… they couldn’t wait! The omens… the senior masters claim the sky demands haste! Grand Master Fendai moved the rite to tonight. They’re brewing the blood-glaze now, burning mortal marrow to prime the festival horsehair!” His gaze flickered to Baozong, a shudder wracking his frame. “It’s the cat! It’s all because of that cursed creature! It’s ruined everything!”
Baozong merely stretched, a slow, deliberate movement that made the pinned Master Yaoquan flinch. “<em>Ruined everything?</em>” the river-cat’s gravelly purr rumbled in Cui Heng’s mind. “<em>I have barely begun. This worm's ruin is a mere morsel. The high masters… their luck will be a banquet.</em>”
Cui Heng flexed his sore, bitten fingers. The image of the hundreds of faceless vat-stirrers, toiling in the toxic fumes, flashed in his mind. Disposable. Sacrificed. No. Not this time. “Linyin,” he said, voice dropping low, “if the blood-glaze is being brewed, it needs a vehicle. Where do the seniors draw the clear stock for tonight's rite?”
Su Linyin caught his drift at once, squinting through the mist. “The high cistern,” she replied, pointing up the sheer cliff past the highest tiers, toward a masonry basin notched into the rock. “It takes mountain runoff, tempers it with premium tree-sap, and feeds the jade pens used at Waterfall Peak. They intend to brush the Dragon-Ward across the Gorge of Whispers at midnight.”
“<em>Midnight?</em>” Baozong’s mental voice crackled. “<em>Merely hours. The tainted resin will be piped into that basin, then applied. We foul the headwaters before horsehair touches rock. A clean surge of calamity through their own aqueduct.</em>”
Cui Heng nodded, a plan forming in his mind with surprising clarity. He was no fighter, no schemer, but he knew lacquers. He knew vats. “I can brew a clean binder,” he told Su Linyin. “Clear resin. Pure enough to swallow an additive whole.” He glanced at Baozong. “Something that can overwhelm their glazes.”
Baozong grunted, arching his spine until several coppery plates sloughed from his flank, clattering onto the wet planks in a glimmering heap. “<em>Take them, boy. Each carries a grain of cosmic ruin. Pound them to flour and dissolve them in your binder. Whatever quill drinks it will spit ruin onto the silk.</em>” He blinked, looking suddenly fatigued. “<em>But it will drain me. I will be ravenous, weak. You must handle the brewing.</em>”
“Move,” Su Linyin urged, yanking Cui Heng away from the sniveling overseer. They sprinted off the catwalk through deafening spray, cutting down toward a disused annex beneath a crumbling ledge.
The workshop was dark, filled with the faint, metallic tang of old solvents. Cui Heng moved with a practiced efficiency that surprised even himself. He located a clean, unused copper vat, still gleaming beneath a layer of dust. He drew clean creek water from an iron spigot, measuring tree oils, lime salts, and tree gums. His scarred fingers worked swiftly, ladling, sifting, and stirring with long-honed instinct.
Su Linyin located a stone mortar and heavy pestle, bearing down on the cat's discarded plates. The plates resisted at first, then fractured under steady grinding into an ochre powder that smelled of damp moss and ozone. Baozong, curled on a high shelf, watched with half-lidded eyes, his usual gruff energy replaced by a deep, weary stillness.
Time slipped away beside the low furnace. Cui Heng kept the flame steady, ladling continuously until the sap glossed over with an amber sheen. When the liquid broke in clean ribbons from his paddle, Su Linyin tipped the shimmering dust into the cauldron. The broth curdled for a heartbeat, rippling inward as the grains dissolved, filling the room with the dry tang of scorched pine. Cui Heng had brewed countless vats, but none had ever felt quite so alive.
“It’s ready,” he announced, his voice hoarse from concentration. The cold stones fell quiet, save for the cooling pop of the vat. Baozong, rousing himself, gave a weak, satisfied purr. “<em>Upward now, boy. The mountain artery. Pipe it straight into the high cistern.</em>”
They divided the mixture into five lidded stoneware pots and began the climb through maintenance chases and overflow drains. Su Linyin, with her brush-wielder’s understanding of energy channels, was an invaluable guide. She led them through disused ventilation shafts, along narrow, grime-slicked pipe-walks that clung to the outer walls of the cliff, and past roaring overflow grates that threatened to tear the buckets from their grasp. Accustomed to hauling boiling mash across slippery floorboards, Cui Heng moved without stumbling, though the heavy jugs burned his shoulders.
They climbed until the draft sharpened and the distant pound of ceremonial gongs rattled through the rock. A hidden access grating opened onto a granite ledge near the top falls. Below, lantern lines flickered across the terraced workhouses.
Before them opened the intake channel, a stone flume fed from the upper pool. This line funneled pure diluent straight to the ceremonial pavilions on the peak.
Cui Heng tilted the first jug, splashing the heavy, reddish broth into the current. It swirled, a dark, potent ribbon merging seamlessly with the crystal-clear water. Then the second, the third, the fourth. Jug by jug, the iron-tinted sap blended invisibly into the rushing channel.
He hoisted the fifth pot, tipping the thick dregs into the intake until an iron boot scraped stone behind him. He whirled.
Standing on the catwalk beneath the moon stood Grand Master Jingshi, silk sleeves whipping in the draft. Behind him waited four enforcers with drawn, inscribed sabers. The old man looked straight at Cui Heng, taking in the drippings on the empty pot in his hands, and smiled.