The Ice-Fang ridge rose twelve thousand feet into the northern night. Blue ice coated the black slate. Five miles south, the Northern Siphon Spire stood in the bottom of the rift valley. It was three miles across at the base. Its bronze walls narrowed as they rose into the clouds. Pipes wide enough to take a barge reached down from the tower into the frozen water veins.
Three hundred thousand people waited around it in the snow. No fire or lantern showed above the trenches. In the forward shelter, Iron Mountain Ba ran his thumb along the winch cable while squad leaders passed quiet signals down the line. The fourteen launchers were in place. The crews had fitted their earplugs.
Pei Jing sat alone on the slate ridge, beneath a shelf of blue ice. He took a bowl of cold brown rice from his bag. It was topped with mountain greens pickled in salt and mustard seed. The rice was dry. The greens made his tongue sting. He let a little clean snow melt in his mouth to wash it down.
His mother had fed him a meal like that in Cloudford. He could remember the bowl in her hands.
