In the quiet survey niche of Entry hall 189, Qiao Ming set the taken away jade canister upon his heavy teak balancing bench.
The canister was nine inches tall and four inches in width, carved from a single block of pale Hetian green jade, heavy with three bands of cast bronze pinned with tiny copper dowels. The air-powered gearwork had been ruined by the sound blast wave in the cloister. The bronze pump-levers were bent like dried reed-stalks, and the leather flap-valves were shredded into black fibers. Yet within the sealed lower pool of the vessel, forty-two drops of condensed soul-vapor remained trapped behind a circular window of clear beryl quartz.
The liquid was extraordinary.
It didn’t sit flat like water or form a knee pad like oil. It hovered in the center of the jade chamber as a shimmering, rainbow-bright azure sphere that rotated slowly on its own axis. Tiny points of golden light—the stone-hard thoughts of the ancient cantor—drifted through the liquid like golden dust-motes suspended in summer honey. When Qiao Ming brought his horn lantern near the glass, the liquid flared with a soft, pulsing turquoise soft glow that smelled faintly of mountain rain and dried plum blossoms.
