The silk roof of the royal command pavilion snapped and shuddered under the relentless lashing of frozen sleet.
Pitched atop a lonely granite bluff ten leagues west of the eastern border, the pavilion was supposed to project the supreme, rock-steady majesty of the Golden Sun Empire. Gold-stitched dragon tapestries lined the walls, and three massive iron fire bowls burned mountain charcoal day and night. Yet the bitter wind hissed through the seams of the canvas. He carried an icy dampness that froze the spilled wine on the campaign table into red slush.
Crown Prince Zhao Lie sat behind a heavy hardwood desk. He was wrapped in a mantle of black dragon-bear fur that failed to quell the violent shivering in his limbs.
His face was drawn, his skin the color of curdled grease. Dark, purple hollows circled his bloodshot eyes. It burned with the manic, uneven fire of a man who had not slept for five days. Across his temples, black veins pulsed erratically beneath the skin, throbbing in silent synchrony with the leech-like hum locked in his sea of mind.
Before him lay three stacks of urgent dispatches, their parchment corners crusted with frost.
“Read it again,” Zhao Lie snarled, his voice rasping like a rusty saw against green pine.
