The quiet of Entry hall 163 was an embrace of dry stone.
Two hundred paces south of the roaring clouded eye of Sluice Nine, the air ceased its violent rough churning, settling into the cold, monastic peace that had governed the upper galleries for thousand years. Here, the floor was built of pale limestone flags laid four hundred years ago, perfectly dry and swept clean of the black dark rock slime that choked the lower under-road drains.
Qiao Ming walked into the entry hall with the slow, stiff gait of an exhausted pack-mule. His bare feet made damp, grey prints upon the dry flags, each step leaving a faint oval of evaporating moisture that faded into the porous stone.
He passed beneath the grand transverse arch of Entry hall 162. There, the relief carvings of the ancient water-scribes decorated the spandrels. The carvings showed men with knotted lines, lead plumbs, and wooden water gate-rakes, working in concert to tame the ancient floods of the First Epoch. In their carved stone faces, Qiao Ming recognized the same furrowed brows, the same tight, patient jaws. The same quiet respect for water that had guided his own solitary life.
“I walk the road you paved, masters,” he whispered to the stone figures as he passed beneath their feet.
