Such optimism may still prove to be justified: but the bets are much riskier, now that China ’s leadership has shown its continued reliance on the mailed fist and its continued vulnerability to factional disputes.
Rather than overload the suit’s resources, he relaxed. The power axe, clenched in his mailed fist, still hewed away at the same small area in front of him, but for the life of him he couldn’t push himself into the space it liquefied, nor could he shift the weapon to left or to right.
I bear the same arms now but the middle finger of the mailed fist is no longer extended since the Queen’s herald, Rouge Croix, discovered that in certain parts of France such a gesture could be taken as offensive or obscene.