A hammer fell at Mount Cangmang. Its note traveled through the Alliance’s linked ward stones. Pei Jing felt it in the slate beneath him. One after another, the four sectors answered.
He unwrapped two squares of Iron March Cake. The roasted barley and dried dragon tendon took a while to chew. He washed them down with hot ginseng liquor. By the time he closed the flask, he could bend his fingers easily in the wind.
The spires could warn each other. Ten seconds after the first impact, any standing spire could raise a void ward over the rest. The cold iron had to arrive before then. A cracked spire could still draw through its buried feed. The two-minute clock would start when the first of those feeds shut off. They would stop the other three and cut the upper junction before the current could shift and burn the land. Every sector had seven spikes. Each spike had a pair of engines ready to drive it. In rehearsal, all the launches had fallen within fifteen seconds. The crews had since measured each flight. The longest shots would go first. The others would release on offset hammer beats so that all twenty-eight reached the spires within ten seconds.
