At the northern end of Entry hall 003, built into a natural hollow where the hard speckled rock met a stratum of heat-proof soapstone, stood the ancient Salt-Kiln.
It was a squat, domed structure six paces in width, built of dark stone slabs bound together by mortar made of crushed oyster shells and fiery ash. For hundreds of years before Qiao Ming’s arrival, the sea-scribes of the First Epoch had used this fire to boil salt water into dense white salt bricks, and to dry the healing lichens harvested from the high ceiling crevices. Three narrow iron chimney pipe-pipes rose from its crown, disappearing into the vaulted roof to vent through a network of upright maze channels that scrubbed the smoke before releasing it into the outer ocean currents forty leagues above.
The hearth had been cold for three moons, since Qiao Ming last cured a basket of wild kelp. A layer of grey, stone-hardened ash lay in the firebox, dry as bone dust, holding the faint, ghostlike scent of burned seaweed and ancient peat.
Qiao Ming knelt before the low arched opening, his bare knees pressing into the smooth stone apron. The floor here was stained with rings of dark grease and salt water-scale, the residue of hundreds of years of boiling salt. He took an iron scraper from the hearth ledge and swept the old ash into a bronze bucket. He cleared the iron grate so that the draft could draw cleanly from the underground air ducts beneath…
