The blood that spattered across the clean face of the Broken Slate was dark, thick with stone salt, and hot as boiling tea.
Yan Zhiqiu looked down at the ancient stone slab clutched against her breast. Three heavy droplets of Qiao Ming’s dark blood had struck the hardened shale directly over the engraved glyph representing the First Keel Siphon. The porous stone drank the fluid instantly, the tiny carved grooves pulling the red moisture into their depths through tiny blood vessel action, turning the chalky grey carvings into veins of deep, pulsing crimson.
“Qiao Ming...” she breathed, her voice a cracked, trembling whisper that died against the cold stone of the Round hall.
The land-mapper stood three feet in front of her, his broad back a wall of torn linen and salt-crusted canvas that shielded her entirely from the Scholar’s reach. The six-foot shaft of star-fallen iron protruded eight inches from his back, its three-sided leaf-blade dripping dark red drops onto the hard speckled rock pavers with a steady, steady beat: plip, plop, plip.
The green venom of the dragon-needle, buried in his right neck-joint, was burning through his upper spine. A web of black, frost-like veins had spread from the puncture wound across his shoulder and down his chest, the rotting poison fighting to paralyze his breathing chest muscle.
