Over twelve days, the turquoise South Sea gave way to gray water full of river silt. Pei Jing stood at the rail of the South-Wind Falcon and smelled woodsmoke blowing off the mainland.
The cutter had three masts and copper along her timbers. Two wind-gathering arrays kept the sails full even on still days. An ordinary cargo boat needed two months for the four thousand leagues. This cutter ran day and night. Pei Jing had paid the captain twenty mid-grade spirit stones to get him to the Great Yan River within two weeks.
Each morning the air felt a little drier and colder. He wrapped a gray wool cloak over his linen robe and kept his hat low. Turtle Breathing kept his qi quiet. To the crew and the inspectors on the river galleys, he looked like a traveling physician with a big herb cleaver in a cattle-hide wrap. He kept up the blade on the crossing. The rolling deck gave him no steady place for deeper Foundation practice. The Ledger gave him no new gains for the days he missed. It kept his last recorded progress, so he could pick up where he left off on land.
On the fourteenth morning, the cutter sailed into the tea-colored mouth of the river. Pei Jing walked down the gangway at River-Mouth Anchorage and stepped onto the mud of Azure Province.
