Morning arrived in the underground market without daylight. Its passage was marked only by the shifting draft in the rock fissures. There, the colder surface air sank into the ravine. It pushed the oily reek of roasted lard and sewage deeper into the pedestrian halls.
Pei Jing rose when the water drops from the ceiling nook slowed from six drips per minute to four. He marked the morning drop in surface air pressure.
He rolled his thin straw mattress tightly, lashed it with a strand of dried hemp twine. Then he set it against the clean dark rock pillar. He dipped three fingers into a wooden tub of cold groundwater, rinsed his teeth with coarse salt powder. Then he stepped into the central workshop.
The fire pit was cold and hollow. The firebricks, freed from six hundred pounds of iron-rich clinker and stone-hard charcoal cakes, showed their original terracotta edges. The lower iron grate, which had been choked with melted rock waste for six months, stood cleared to the stone foundation, its twenty-four draft slots clear.
A sharp clatter echoed from the front doorway.
Clack. Scrape. Clack. Scrape.
Old Monster Gui limped through the wooden partition. His bronze peg struck the threshold with deliberate force. His grease-stained sheepskin tunic was buttoned crookedly over his hunched chest. His eyes were red-rimmed from another night of coughing up sulfur thick spit. In his right three-fingered hand, he held his iron-banded cane. In his left, he gripped three irregular chips of pale, semi-clear…
