The water had completed its retreat.
Qiao Ming walked south through the grand axis of Entry halls 151 through 170, his soles bare against the clean, pale limestone flat stone slabs. The air in the infinite row of stone pillars had cooled, cleansed of the foul sulfuric vapors that had accompanied the storm. It smelled once more of ancient wet limestone, cold Atlantic salt water, and the dry, reassuring scent of the sheep fat he carried in his leather apron.
For the first time in sixteen days, the floor was dry enough to walk without wading.
The forty-two huge statues that lined the grand axis stood tall in the quiet dusk. Their stone feet, crusted with pale salt-crust and dried ribbons of bladderwrack from the high wash, rested upon cut stone stands that had been scrubbed clean of black muck. Along the high roof ledges sixty arm-lengths overhead, the colonies of white petrels and grey kittiwakes were nesting in peace, their soft, piping calls echoing through the coffered vaults like the voices of distant flutes.
Qiao Ming stopped at the threshold of Entry hall 154 to inspect Statue #1540: The Silent Shipwright.
The crumpled star-iron prow of the void-cutter had been cleared from the canal bed, hauled to the overflow deep gap by his block-and-tackle rigging during the last watch. The fractured corner of the shipwright’s stone stand remained supported by the three-point oak wooden props he had erected. The seasoned timber was firm, bearing the load without a shudder…
