Audience and Wailing

At the start of the Hour of the Hare, Jinghai Prefecture.

Morning mist rolled in from the sea and wrapped the city walls. The black banner atop them hung still, its sun emblem stitched in gold thread half-lit by the faint dawn. Whenever the wind lifted one corner, a pale golden gleam swept across the streets.

The Abyss-Calming Prefecture stood in the east of the city.

No plaque hung above its gate. The gatehouse was built of massive black stones and stood no more than thirty feet high. Where a plaque should have been, a golden mark an inch long was set into the stone, running downward as though someone had taken a finger for a brush and lightly drawn a single stroke.

Seventeen people had already gathered before the gate.

Liu Shen stood at the front in a dark blue robe. The green jade pendant at his waist rested against his body. He dared only lower his gaze to the three-foot square of flagstone beneath his feet.

"Father," Liu Qing called softly behind him.

Liu Shen did not turn. He put his right hand behind his back and gestured for silence.

The father and son were not alone. Thirty feet to their right stood Hu Yuan, a middle-aged Rogue Cultivator in the early Qi-Eating Realm. Even he had his head bowed.

Now and then, his fingertips emerged from his sleeve, pinching the corner of an old talisman. Its paper had yellowed, its edges had curled, and its cinnabar markings had grown faint.

Farther right stood the heads of two major merchant guilds, Wang De and Sun Li. Wang De was in the early Blood Exchange Realm, slightly plump, and dressed in a brocade robe. Fine sweat beaded on his forehead.

Sun Li was tall and thin, with a sallow