Seventy-four deep-water lengths of upright ascent tested every sinew in Qiao Ming’s body.
The Grand Ascending Stair of Flue Four was a narrow spiral of four hundred and eighty granite steps, hewn directly from the core of the great central pillar that anchored the western side. The steps were steep, barely eight inches wide, their outer edges worn into smooth hollows by forty ages of land-mappers hauling oil casks, lead metal bars, and replacement valves to the upper galleries.
Qiao Ming carried the linen-wrapped bronze metal tube balanced across his right shoulder, his left hand grasping the iron guide-rope that ran along the damp granite wall. The weight pressed into his collarbone through his oilskin coat, heavy and unbending as a corpse.
He didn’t pause on the landings. To stop while carrying eighty pounds up a spiral stair was to allow the muscle burn to freeze the thighs. That made the next step impossible. He climbed with the rhythmic, swaying gait of a mountain porter, his bare calloused soles slapping the cold granite with a steady, muffled pad-pad that echoed up the spiral chimney pipe.
Step one hundred. Step two hundred.
The air changed as he climbed. The bitter, choking sulfur of the silt basin gave way to the cooler, drier air of the middle tiers, until at step four hundred, he entered the warm, draft-free expanse of the Upper Archive Terrace.
