The retreat of the Third Fleet was slow, quiet, and profoundly undignified.
One by one, the twelve bronze-armored dragon frigates and heavy supply barges rose from the muddy fields and terraced pastures of Province Seven. That turned their scarred dragon prows toward the northern mountain pass. Their floating arrays hummed at low idle. They carried barely enough spiritual flux to clear the fifty-foot granite ridges. The peasants of the valley stood on their stone walls. It watched the once-terrifying sky armada limp past like a flock of battered geese.
On the pass road, Marquis Zhao prepared to board his gold-trimmed landing skiff.
The warlord had retrieved two tube-shaped bronze map cases from his flagship’s chart room. It handed them across the pear-wood table to Lin Tao. The cases were sealed with blue beeswax and stamped with the royal sky anchor emblem—the master navigational surveys of the northern boundaries.
“You have your charts, mortal,” Zhao said, his voice flat and heavy. “The sky-lanes through the northern passes, the wind gradients across the high plateaus. The boundary map points of every sky dock between here and the capital.”
Lin Tao broke the wax seal on the first case, drew out a thick roll of heavy thick parchment. Then he unrolled it across the table.
