The scent of burned sandalwood did not belong in the lower galleries of the Ark.
For thirty years, Qiao Ming had known only three scents within the infinite stone vaults: the pungent, animal sweetness of sheep fat. The stone bitterness of drying sea-salt. And the cold, clean breath of wet limestone. Sandalwood was the perfume of sky courts, of golden censers swung by pampered scribes in palace halls high above the clouds—a fragrance of vanity and mortal pride that had no place among the dead.
Qiao Ming moved along the eastern wall of Entry hall 176, his bare soles making no more sound than a falling leaf against the dry pale limestone flags.
He didn’t carry a lantern. He had put out the animal fat wick fifty paces back, navigating entirely by the tactile memory of his feet and the faint, turquoise soft glow of the siphonophore algae clinging to the roof ledges overhead. In his left hand, he held his sixty-fathom horsehair sounding line, coiled tight. In his right, his Folded brass star-compass rested within its leather pouch against his ribs.
At the base of the northeastern transverse arch. There, the ceiling dropped to twelve arm-lengths, was the intake mouth of Upper Air-flow Conduit Twelve.
