The sound of the shovel was the oldest sound in the safe hall.
Shhh-clack. Shhh-clack.
First the soft, wet slide of the curved steel blade through eighteen inches of black dark rock mud, then the dull, ringing scrape of the iron edge striking the grooved pale limestone flags beneath.
Qiao Ming stood in the center of Entry hall 164, stripped to his trousers and hemp apron. His torso was slick with sweat that glistened like oil in the light of the three animal fat lanterns he had hung from the wall sconces. His bare feet were planted wide in the muck, his toes gripping the stone joints beneath the slurry to anchor himself against the weight of each shovelful.
He lifted twenty pounds of black silt on the blade of his seven-pound spade, turned with a smooth, turning motion of his hips, and dumped the load into his wooden barrow.
Thump.
The barrow was a masterwork of utilitarian carpentry from the First Epoch. Carved from seasoned elm planks, heavy with hand-hammered copper bands, and rolling upon a solid wooden wheel shod with an inch-thick tire of cast bronze. It held four hundredweight of wet settled mud without a shudder in its wood slot joints.
