The ferry’s iron keel ground against the mooring rails. Cold wind swept the cargo deck, carrying the smell of sulfur and wet marsh-pig hides. Pei Jing caught the rail as the hull shuddered. Below it there was nothing for twelve thousand feet.
Above him hung Grand Desolation Starry City. Seen from below, it looked like a mountain turned upside down. Eighty-one mooring lines ran from its great basalt blocks to the wharf. The iron groaned in the wind, and the deck boards shook under his sandals.
Seventeen years had passed since he left Cloud Mist. In the fifth winter after the fall, he went back to one of the southern hamlets. A sick man was waiting outside a new grain store in the snow. There was still grain inside, but he couldn’t keep a meal down. Years on the sect’s pills had left him struggling for breath when he lifted a bucket.
A healer named Rong had a room behind the store. She asked Pei Jing to hold the man upright while she listened to his breathing. When he took out the recipe he’d copied on the mountain, she read it and handed it back.
“Bring something I can afford to give him twice,” she said. “He can’t pay for seven rare herbs every time he wants to sleep through the night.”
