The second midnight bell had already sounded when Pei Jing reached the western vent. The grate stood open on a broken hinge. Pei Jing squeezed through it, and the wind hit him hard enough to pull the chin strap of his hat against his jaw.
He was more than ten thousand feet above the land. Sleet came sideways under the city. The great leylines hummed somewhere above him. Through the white air he could see Anchor Chain Seventy-Two swinging into reach. Each link was eight feet long and almost as thick as a tree trunk.
Pei Jing stepped from the ledge and caught the iron. The cold came through his palms like needles. He let his legs swing in and held the curve of the link between his feet. Then he let some of the burden in his marrow settle against his own gravity field. The chain took an effective load of about nine hundred and eighty pounds. It went on swinging.
He had practiced holding his core steady in the wind during the voyage. The chain moved harder than the deck had. Now he began to climb down without letting that balance break. His robe whipped against his shins. Ice collected on his shoulders. He used his Chaos Spirit Root to keep his fingers warm enough to grip. They stayed supple enough to find a hold even after he could no longer see past the next few links.
