Morning light passed across the Black Marsh. From two thousand feet up Thunder Cliff, Pei Jing could see the full sweep of the mire. Two hundred miles of sinkholes, dark water, and mangroves lay below him. When he first crossed the marsh down among the trees, the marsh had seemed to go on forever.
The purple squalls were gone. The air smelled of pine and drying peat. Thin steam rose from the mudflats.
Pei Jing turned back to the cave. The roof was gone, and sunlight reached the gravel where his mat had been. The stumps of the twelve copper rods were fused to the rock. His tools had left a dark square on the dusty bench.
He took clean hemp trousers and a gray tunic from his pack. The cloth settled over the new bronze skin. Though the wind was cold, his body held at thirty-seven degrees.
He buckled his sharkskin belt. He took the pine box with the Black Mountain Whetstone from the top of the Cloud-Silk pouch and put it in the leather pouch at his left hip. He tucked the silver drawstring of the Cloud-Silk pouch under the fold on his right. Then he settled the Cloud-Splitter diagonally across his back and pulled the harness snug. The forty pounds stayed still when he turned.
