Pei Jing stood eighty paces above the crater. The morning sun reached his face. There was no sulfur in the air above him, and he could see clear sky all the way to the ridges.
He breathed out. White vapor curled from his lips and broke up in the still air. He put a hand to his cheek. The burn on his breastbone pulled when he lifted his elbow, and the numb finger still wouldn’t close all the way. The tight creases from days in the heat and smoke had eased at the corners of his eyes. His hair had settled after the lightning, thick and black at the nape of his neck. He gathered it into the strip of hemp that had come loose during the climb.
He looked south. A rivet on a soldier’s armor caught the light two miles away. When the man moved, Pei Jing heard him draw a short breath. He could feel the slow turn of the core beneath his ribs at the same time.
Six hundred years from birth, if nothing cut that life short. He was in his eighties by the calendar, though his body looked thirty-two. He had seen men outlive their families by a generation and wonder what to do with the next winter. He could live to see the names of whole countries change. The number sat quietly in the Ledger while he tried to picture it.
