The mountain wind dropped, leaving the road in an eerie, breathless stillness.
High above the blooming meadow, the twelve royal sky-dreadnoughts hovered in a staggered diamond formation. Their massive bronze hulls creaked under the strain of sky shifted weight, the sixteen circular floating arrays along their keels glowing with a dull, throbbing violet radiance. The smell of scorched transformer oil and hot copper hung heavy in the air. It drifted down in greasy gusts that made the roadside finches flutter nervously in the blackberry bushes. Between the towering warships and the moist mountain soil, the static slope was climbing steadily, raising goosebumps along the skin of Lin Tao’s forearms.
Lin Tao stood before the pear-wood frame stand table, his bandaged hands steady as stone.
The sixty yards of gold-threaded sky silk lay stretched across the dark wood. Its surface shone with thousands of tiny red stone runes. Every rune was a data point. Every nested ministerial seal was an execution gate. Every gold-threaded margin was a spark bus carrying spiritual current between the southern provinces and the Central Treasury in the Celestial Capital. The entire scroll was humming. A high-pitched, singing shaking that set the dust dancing in the wood grain like iron filings around a lodestone.
