Kaelen swallowed another mouthful of lukewarm tea, his gaze resting on the purple dragon-wax seal in Sera’s hand.
“Fifty crates of living cores,” Kaelen said, his voice flat and unimpressed. “The grandmaster must have very high heating bills.”
“It’s not a joke, Kaelen,” Sera said, her jaw tight as she crushed the vellum back into its leather tube. “Volkov has seven towers and thousands of battle alchemists. If he finds out Dravus is dead and the frontier legion is captured, he will mobilize the Censorate sky-fleets.”
“Then he will have to look for us through twenty feet of salt,” Kaelen said, setting his empty teacup down on the small wooden tray.
He rose from his stool, stretching his arms toward the basalt ceiling until his shoulder joints popped with a clean, satisfying crack.
The burst window is still open, Kaelen thought, checking the translucent timer in his vision. If I don’t finish the garden irrigation now, I will have to carry buckets like an indentured farmhand. Manual labor is strictly against my physician’s advice.
He walked back over to the Star-Fall plinth.
The twelve spirit-gold spikes hummed with deep, steady power. With his 400 percent Transcendent Dao Intent still flooding his mind, rewriting the local geomancy was as simple as adjusting the wick on an oil lamp.
