The midnight frost settled over the flat stone slabs of the East Wing courtyard like a dusting of crushed sea salt.
In the center of the courtyard, mounted on an iron tripod over a bed of glowing hard coal embers, sat an eight-gallon cast-iron brewing cooking pot. The iron was black, seasoned with years of healing broths, streaming a dry, steady heat that melted the frost within a ten-foot radius.
Inside the cooking pot, the decoction had been simmering for eleven hours.
Pei Jing sat cross-legged on a split-cedar bench, wrapped in a coarse wool blanket.
Beside him on the bench sat the Black Mountain Whetstone in its cedar bath.
While the broth simmered, Pei Jing had spent the early evening hours performing his daily upkeep. He had sharpened his skinning knife, sharpened his twelve carbon-steel flying needles. Then he wiped down the twenty-two pounds of the Cloud-Splitter Cleaver-Saber with winterized rapeseed oil.
Shhh-clink.
The slow, careful grinding of metal on dark rock had grounded his mind. It cleared away the leftover nervous stimulation of the morning’s battle on the East Stone Bridge.
