Forty harpoons came down over the crater. Each was twelve feet long, four hundred pounds of star iron under runes that gave it more weight as it fell. Pei Jing watched the points spread out to cover the crater floor.
He bent his knees. The old earth and thunder currents gathered in his legs. When he pushed off, the limestone collapsed beneath him. Dust rose fifty paces, and cracks spread through the bedrock.
He shot up through the falling iron. Three shafts glanced off his shoulders and went spinning into the crater. The rest struck the floor beneath him. He climbed past the smoke in less than two seconds. The domain moved with him. By the time he reached the ridge, its center had shifted from the crater to the ship.
Ahead, the Heaven-Cleaving White-Jade Dreadnought was lifting off the ridge. The three masts were gone, but the keel wards were still holding the ship up. They managed to pull the ship clear of the trees, though it hung at a tilt and blue sparks fell from its belly. The jade over the hull shone through the smoke.
The ship was three hundred feet long and sixty wide. It had sailed for two hundred years. Its cedar frame lay behind eighty layers of wards, and the forty batteries that had just fired were already turning in their ports.
