Disturbance in the Outer Sea

Wang Meng stood at the tent entrance. His hands paused, but he did not look up.

"No."

Old Liu sighed and rubbed the hilt at his waist with his uninjured hand. He wanted to ask more, but when he glanced up at Wang Meng's face flickering in the firelight, he swallowed the words.

Dusk sank below the sea.

The sun, hidden behind gray clouds all day, dropped toward the far edge of the Sea of Ruins without leaving a trace of sunset glow. The sky slipped straight from leaden gray into iron blue.

The tidal flats looked especially vast in the gloom. Mutated remains embedded in the mud reflected a faint golden light, like countless half-closed eyes watching the stone embankment from deep in the mire.

The camp stood three miles west of the embankment, in an abandoned Blackwater Harbor salt warehouse. Packed-earth walls enclosed it on four sides, thick thatch covered the roof, and its sturdy structure could hold several hundred people with minor repairs.

Supplies filled the warehouse and the ground around it: bundles of arrows, medicinal herbs, replacement Leather Armor, and unfinished blades. A dozen or so large vats stood against the wall, filled with herbal water for staunching blood.

Wang Meng sat cross-legged with his back against a tent post, a whetstone spread across his knees.

He was sharpening his heavy-backed cleaver. Golden ichor had eaten several tiny pits into the edge. If he did not grind them away, the blade would chip the next time it struck hard bone.

A hollow had worn into the fine face of the bluestone. He dipped the blade in water and pushed it across the stone, stroke after unhurried stroke, its edge making an even rasp.

Old Liu sat near the tent entrance. The salve on his left arm