The high overhead frame above Sluice-Gate Nine smelled of boiled sheep fat, Stockholm pine-tar, and the dry, sweet scent of seasoned spruce timber.
Qiao Ming stood ninety arm-lengths above the flooded basin, surrounded by the clockwork legacy of the ancient builders. Here, inside the dry upper vault of the gate-house, the roar of the water was muffled by twelve-foot stonework walls into a heavy, rhythmic drone that shook through the spruce planks under his bare feet. The air was warm and dry, smelling of old linseed oil and cedar shavings.
Arranged along the floor were eight massive spruce storage chests, their lids secured with wrought-iron hasps and pinned with oak dowels.
Qiao Ming walked to the third chest, knelt, and drove his bone chisel under the seal. The dried animal fat that sealed the lid against moisture cracked with a sound like snapping kindling. He lifted the heavy spruce lid, propping it open with an ash wood rod.
Inside, coiled in wide, oiled loops, lay the heavy rigging cordage of the Second Epoch.
The cordage was two inches in width, braided from four strands of long-staple Manila hemp twisted together with core filaments of boiled sea-silk. It had been steeped in hot pine-tar and rendered sheep fat before being laid away two hundred years ago. The hemp was supple, heavy as lead in his hands, and free of the dry-rot that plagued modern cordage.
