The thirty coastal patriarchs clamped their jaws shut so hard that two molars cracked in the silence.
Nobody dared to exhale. An elder from the Wave-Splitting Pavilion pinched his nose until his face turned purple, terrified that a sneeze would forfeit his sect’s convoy pass.
Across the iron deck, Deacon Vane padded on felt slippers, replacing the elders’ iron boot nails with cork pegs.
Kaelen Vance did not spare them a glance.
Nearly five more days of silent sailing inside the warship’s spirit vein had carried the convoy halfway to Shattered Compass Atoll. Those one hundred and fourteen real hours added two hundred and twenty-eight Fallow Hours to his craft tracks while he read Book Nineteen, The Sword Saint’s Tearful Concubine.
Two pages left until the concubine discovers the disguised magistrate is actually the imperial tax collector.
Kaelen took a slow breath, letting his eyelids droop.
If these noisy old men maintain this cemetery hush for another sixty real minutes, Track Three and Track Four will finally hit seven hundred and twenty hours.
