The wind that blew across the ridge of the Crucible was not a single wind. It was a crash of seven conflicting seasons.
One breath brought the choking, rotten-egg heat of the heavy-duty foundries. The next brought the sub-zero chill of the starlit void. The next brought the dry, choking dust of the western dunes, followed instantly by the salty spray of a drowned ocean.
Below them, the Grand Duchy was dying of its own possibilities.
Ren Prime stood with his scuffed boots planted on the snow-dusted flags. He held the spirit-thick parchment scroll open between his hands. Behind him, Mira had moved to the sheltered base of a shattered archway. Her left hand gathered dry juniper twigs from a windblown crevice. Her quartz right hand pressed them against the stone to strike a spark with an old flint from her apron pocket.
“You’re making a fire?” Ren glanced back at her, incredulous. “Mira, the sky is collapsing.”
“If we’re going to hold a trial in the middle of seven hurricanes, I’m not doing it with frozen fingers,” Mira replied with flat, unimpressed practicality. “And neither are you. You can’t hold a metal pen when your knuckles are blue. You know how you get when your hands freeze—you smudge the ink and start swearing at the parchment.”
