Location:Dragon estate, outskirts of Obsidian City
Date/Time:Emberwane, 9942 AZI
Realm:Lower Realm, Doha
The map covered the entire wall.
Yinxin stood in front of it in human form — silver-white hair pinned back, gray robe, golden eyes moving along the threads that had consumed the operations room's eastern wall for eleven months. Pins for villages. Colored thread for what moved between them. Blue for courier routes. Red for supply. Green for trade. Yellow for the communication arrays.
Eleven months ago the wall had held eighty-three pins, clustered tight around the provinces nearest the Academy. The courier network Jayde had seeded before the Harrowing — riders carrying messages between villages that had never spoken to each other directly, built on the plainest principle Yinxin had ever been handed: information shared is danger halved.
The wall held a hundred and twenty-seven pins now.
