The forty-hour tide never fully abandoned Entry hall 325.
Even at the deepest point of the low slack, when the upper porticoes were dry enough for chalk pencils, the lower terrace of the thirty-second octant remained flooded with four feet of black, sluggish salt water. The water had no exit through ordinary floor deck drains. It was held in a massive retaining basin eighty arm-lengths wide, designed to keep the foundations of the outer edge row of stone pillars permanently sunk in heavy stone oil and salt water to prevent the dark rock from drying out and crazing under spatial pressure.
Qiao Ming stepped down into the pool, his bare feet sinking through the cold water until his soles touched the ribbed flags beneath.
The salt water was thick, oily, and heavy as liquid lead, rising to his waist in a dark, swirling sheet that tugged at the tails of his oilskin coat. It smelled of ancient petroleum seeps, crushed sea-cucumbers, and the cold stone bitterness of iron that had never seen a sun. He cinched his leather harness tighter across his ribs, looping the strap of his work box high over his left shoulder to keep his dry parchment and chalk rolls above the waterline.
