The Adjuster wasn’t a tall man, but he had a barrel-like chest and thick arms. If not for the badges of office on this sleeveless shirt, Fintan might have mistaken him for a slave. He had a symbol Fintan saw marked on the slaves. It was a silver ball that looked disturbingly like a ball of yarn, but the threads were parallel, curving in together to create a continuous knot.

  All the slaves had the symbol branded on their flesh, but in different places. He hadn’t thought much of the mark because, like all scars, a thought and a little mist healed all wounds. The slaves or masters could spend the effort manifesting a special symbol, but why waste the effort?

  The Adjuster had other symbols pinned to his shirt. He had both the shield of the Xingren and the market, and Fintan suspected he was capable of applying low justice without a judge or jury. WuXin’s ban was evidence of his powers, but the Adjuster stared nervously at the merchant’s row, concerned that the Adversary’s Acolytes would return.

  “What is the test?” WuXin asked, gasping and coughing as he inhaled dust from the narrow street.

  He didn’t look like a technomancer in his leather armor. He removed his helmet and bracers and set them on the ground when he crawled into a crouching position. The Zeusopolans used copper and bronze. Bronze for strength and copper for conductivity. The play of electricity that sparked off his equipment didn’t impress the guards or the Adjuster.

  For the most part, the guards stood at the perimeter with their backs turned, with the exception of those whose ire mapped directly to WuXin’s dust-covered face.

  The Adjuster had stopped them after a simple beating, but Fintan could tell they believed the Zeusopolan fraud deserved more.

  The presence of the Adjuster wasn’t sufficient threat to clear the street. If anything, he generated interests. A few other Zeusopalans with slaves carrying their purchases stopped to watch if they cared for their countryman, but it was hidden behind speculation, and Fintan lost their faces behind the crowd.

  The Market had more followers than Fintan recognized. Cherry had picked well for them. RuTing was armored in the fashion of the Warrior Goddess, and she slouched against the side of the jeweler's table beside WuXin. She’d crossed her legs as she leaned, her knotted leather skirt exposing her legs, and she could kick all the way to the top of his head.

  She was at ease while he sweated. His brown woolen cochall stuck to his forehead with condensation if he didn’t continuously move around. The mist in the Market was welcome, but the heat combined with the water created a turgid soup. Burning metal and the press of bodies spiced a stew that was only palatable to the distracted.

  Fintan was anything but distracted. The guard returned with a small wooden box. Inside the box, parts and pieces swooshed around as if responding to their own tide. He edged over to look inside while the guard held the lid for the Adjuster and WuXin to see.

  “You couldn’t find one that was a little more put together?” the Adjuster asked.

  “You wanted to give him the test quickly,” the guard said.

  The Adjuster returned a frosty stare, but it didn’t cool the air. He directed his gaze to Wuxin.

  “Assemble.”

  “I don’t have any instructions,” Wuxin said, but the Adjuster tilted his head to look into Wuxin’s eyes.

  “A true Son of the Builder does not need directions. Succeed or fail. If you adhere to the Builder, your sentence will be light. Fail and you will be a slave on the Market.”

  WuXin nodded. There was nothing else he could do. He placed his hands over the box and screws smaller than a Fintan’s hair floated on invisible magnetic fields. Crystaline matrices and circuitry, followed by internal bracing and a plastic shell, circled WuXin’s head as a machine they had never seen rose from the box in pieces.

  The parts weren’t all magnetic, but the static electricity magnetized their surface so he could manipulate them through space.

  Fintan had never seen someone use their Skill for so long. His Skill was instantaneous. For a fraction of a second, he existed in two places and was separated by a place that was not. WuXin’s Skill was different. His power transformed the afterlife, defying or recreating physics.

  Manifesting required effort. Desire or will consumed and transformed the mist into something else. If you were healthy, a Skill required little mist. It simply was.

  WuXin’s Skill was unlike Fintan’s attempt to move gold. Fintan had been manifesting to augment his Skill, using the power of his attributes to boost his capabilities and consuming mist, and with it his life.

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  As the millions of pieces floated around WuXin, Fintan believed the false Zeusopolan was channeling something greater than himself. There was no way a person could know what was happening. If such a channel to the divine did exist, it was hidden, because they only had the memory of their gods in the Afterlife.

  A black rectangle solidified in the air as the parts conjoined into a screen. The thousands of tiny screws found homes. The processor welded itself onto a board with invisible bonds and no heat.

  What was the limit to technomancy if it controlled the elements?

  WuXin’s limit, however, was obvious. Skill or not, after five minutes of technomancy, his face was flush. What appeared effortless became a grueling battle. He fell to his knees on the hard stone as the screen repaired itself and the Adjuster caught it from the air. He pointed the sensor on the rectangle at Wuxin.

  “What is it?” Wuxin asked. His body was sweat-covered as if he’d run a hundred miles.

  “It’s called a Recruiter,” the Adjuster said. “It measures your ascension in the afterlife.”

  “Why would you need to know such a thing?”

  “Unlike the physical world, where ascended people live closer to the gods, we are trapped in the afterlife. The Recruiter measures phantom levels. The higher the phantom level, the higher your resistance to the prison and the more interesting you are to the Adversary. He’s our only hope for escape.”

  The sensor on the back of the screen glowed red, and the Adjuster played it over WuXin. Green symbols flashed across the front. The numbers didn’t have any meaning to Fintan. WuXin was nearly spent. He had one leg underneath him and one knee on the ground. He breathed heavily trying to find the strength to stand.

  “What does that mean?” Fintan asked.

  “You are impressive,” the Adjuster told Wuxin. “Let’s measure the rest of you.”

  When the screen went to RuTing it glowed an angry red, but before the Adjuster could study the numbers, the Recruiter broke in half. The frame holding the screen in place fell to the ground and the thousand screws dribled through the Adjuster’s fingers.

  WuXin lay prostrate before the Adjuster. His hand had reached out before he fell.

  A bray from behind the crowd scattered the watchers.

  “What did the Recruiter say?” the Acolyte asked. The old Acolyte had returned unannounced. Perhaps he had a Skill or perfected Illusion. He was completely unseen until he appeared without his entourage. Fintan realized with their square irises, the Acolytes could create a more perfect illusion than anything he or RuTing could muster. Their protruding eyes gave them nearly three hundred and sixty-degree vision.

  “I don’t know,” the Adjuster said.

  With Fintan’s help, WuXin had risen. One arm was draped over his shoulder, but all of them were close together.

  Cherry had watched, counting her gilders with the auditors, but their foil sheets were complete, and she crossed the distance. RuTing was beside him on WuXin’s left. All Fintan needed was for them to touch. The guards cowered away from the Acolyte, but they were only a Step away from escape.

  Fintan didn’t want to use his Skill unless he had to. To Step, RuTing would have to provide an Illusion, but it would be all too obvious he had a Skill very similar to the Adversary’s portals.

  “I am not a Son of the Builder after all,” WuXin whispered. He was so weak that the Adjuster had to lean in. “I could not hear him in my heart.” WuXin managed to raise his head, if only a little. “I did not hear him ask for this thing.”

  The Adjuster considered, and the Acolyte penetrated his guards, who scrambled out of the way of the cloven hoofs.

  “Repair the Recruiter,” the Acolyte commanded.

  “I cannot,” the Adjuster said. “It has been touched by a foreign god and must be destroyed.”

  The thousands of screws, plastic parts and processors fallen on the ground sparked with static electricity as the Adjuster’s Skill took hold. They spun as if caught in a dust devil above his upraised hand. Instead of fitting together, they continued spinning faster until they turned into dust. The gold and heavy elements inside the Recruiter reflected light like broken diamonds.

  He cast them into the air, where they exploded into mist that rained like a summer storm. The Adjuster’s technomancy was so much greater than WuXin’s that he controlled the individual atomic elements of his creation.

  The Acolyte did not look happy. He was wet from the rain, and his soggy robes drooped to the ground. Without the assistance of his brothers, he was more stooped than ever. His previous air of mischievous delight had evaporated.

  “Very well,” the Acolyte said. “The Adversary welcomes a new slave. Adjuster, you may proceed.”

  “He will be judged and sentenced in the people’s court.”

  “You have already judged him and found him wanting. Is it not within the law for you to mark a slave?”

  “As is necessary for the Market,” the Adjuster admitted.

  “A Market cannot exist without an Adjuster.”

  The square irises of the ancient Acolyte fixed on the Adjuster under his grey bushy eyebrows, and the long, wiry, white beard under the Acolyte’s chin bobbed as he spoke, but behind those comical features, the gruffness to the Acolyte's voice as he chewed in the air was unmistakable. He was holding the Adjuster personally accountable—if he didn’t perform, there would be a new Adjuster.

  “Very well then,” the Adjuster said. He removed the pin from his sleeveless shirt. The mark of the slaves was a knot like a ball of yarn, except that instead of threads at random, they were lined up like bars that interwove with no ending.

  The pin was not a pin, but steel knuckles that fit around the Adjuster’s fingers like a stamp.

  “This is the mark of the prison that holds us,” the Adjuster told WuXin. “Only the Adversary can free us from the prison, and only he can remove the mark. A slave to the Adversary has only one choice left, and that is where they put the Bars. The Bars cannot be concealed. If you cover the Bars, they will burn you.”

  WuXin pulled aside his leather vest to reveal the center of his chest, and the Adjuster hit him square on the breastbone. Fintan didn’t understand how, but the brand smoked like white hot steel on WuXin’s chest, and he smelled burning flesh as the technomancer collapsed in his arms.

  “It’s done,” the Adjuster said. “He is now a slave on the open market. The gilder’s fee for his purchase will be paid to the Adversary. Like all slaves, his purchase price will start at ten gilders.”