The wind swallowed the rattle of the pebble in half a heartbeat. Zhao had spent four years training his hearing to pick out water and shifting rock underground. He knew the sound of a stone disturbed by something heavier than sleet.
He held on to the three-foot drill. His blue coat was soaked and his hands were stiff. After days of fighting and running, he was still alert enough to turn toward the western cliff. He drew breath to warn Sun, who was bent over the hammer four paces away.
A needle flew out of the juniper roots.
Pei Jing’s Astral Crystalline Bone Sheath held his arm steady as he released it. The four-inch needle crossed fourteen paces of wind and sleet at two hundred and forty paces a second. The centipede qi in the point found its way into Zhao’s spirit veins. His eyes went blank before he could call out.
Zhao’s fingers slipped from the drill and his knees buckled. Pei Jing dropped fifteen feet from the cleft and caught him before he hit the shale. His boots took the landing without knocking a stone loose. The drill lay beside the unused charm at Zhao’s station.
Zhao was unconscious but still breathing. Pei Jing lowered him into the shadow under the nearest overhanging slab. He pulled the blue robe over Zhao’s hands so they wouldn’t give him away in the fog.
