The volume was heavier than three lead line-weight-bobs combined.
Qiao Ming lifted the manuscript from its cedar bed with both hands, his arm muscles tightening under the dead stone weight. The book was eighteen inches tall, twelve inches wide, and nearly four inches thick, bound between two solid plates of beaten deep-sea bronze that had rusted to the rich, velvety green of weathered temple bells.
He carried the volume to the slate stone base, setting it down with gentle respect upon a clean square of oiled canvas.
He knelt before the book, his lantern beam lighting up the cover.
Across the front plate, etched deep into the bronze with spirit-acid and inlaid with fine ribbons of hammered gold-silver metal wire, ran the formal title of the work:
CHRONICLES OF THE DROWNED FOUNDATION: CYCLE SEVENTY-FOUR. THE FINAL SURVEY OF THE Outer HULL. COMPILED BY SCRIBE CHEN YUE, CHIEF Water-scribe OF THE ARK.
Qiao Ming touched the gold-silver metal characters with the tip of his finger.
Scribe Chen Yue. He had known the name since his first year as an apprentice sounder. In the third hall, Chen Yue’s working sandals still sat beside the great water-clock. His stone ink-slab was still stained with the purple residue of dried lamp-black. And his name appeared on the foundation tablets of thirty entry halls. But all his formal journals had vanished from the central archive, presumed lost during the great high-pressure collapse that ended the seventy-fourth cycle.
