Pei Jing followed the lamps into the tomb until the stone floor came to an end. A shelf of black rock stuck out over a flooded shaft. Light from an old ward fell across the flooded rock. It showed an image of a separate northern inlet far above him, beyond the surface battle. The ward tracked a feeder shaft from that inlet down to this one. Deep below the reflected hulls, he could see figures moving in the last stretch of the shaft itself.
He drew his hat down and eased into the water along the wall. The pressure came back at once. It pushed the folds of his robe flat against his chest and forced its way through the seams of his boots. He slowed his heart with Turtle Breathing and let his skin cool until it matched the water around him.
Below the shelf, the sea ended in a curved, shining membrane. Beyond it lay dry air and a drop of about eight hundred feet. He had heard pearl divers call the rift the Trench of Broken Hulls. Whatever they had seen from above, they could have had little idea of what lay under its floor. The ward was old enough to have been there before Great Yan, yet it still held back the sea.
