Night fell over Red Mist Valley with the weight of an iron shutter.
Outside the heavy timber doors, an icy rain lashed the dark rock gorge. That turned the red clay alleys into rivers of freezing slush. The wind howling down the canyon cleft sounded like a dying beast. But inside the workshop, the hearth was warm.
The honeycomb fuel briquettes burned with steady, smokeless radiance. It filled the room with a deep cherry glow. Above the grate, the Three-Legged Mottled Brass Cauldron rested silently upon its stone base, its polished hull reflecting the embers.
Old Monster Gui sat upon a low cedar stool near the hearth. He had unbuckled his bronze peg-leg, leaning the heavy metal shaft against the wall, revealing the thick, puckered stump of his right thigh wrapped in greasy linen bandages.
On the floor between them sat an unglazed clay jar of aged sorghum wine and a flat pine trencher holding half a pound of dry, salted beef jerky.
“Drink,” Gui rasped, pushing a chipped baked-clay bowl toward Pei Jing. “On a night like this, the cold seeps out of the stone and settles into the bone marrow. If you don’t burn it out with sorghum mash, by morning your knees will creak like rusty hinges.”
