The turn of the dawn tide was always marked by a distinctive change in the sound character of the House.
During the flood, the sound was a heavy, percussive roar. The moving battering of eighty million tons of cold ocean water forcing its way through the maze-like intake gates, compressing the air in the lower water tanks until the speaking-pipes hissed like nesting vipers. But during the dawn ebb, when the great external drain tube began its twelve-hour drainage, the noise transformed into a vast, dropping sigh.
The water peeled away from the forty thousand cut stone blocks of the outer seawall with a sound like tearing silk. In the great rows of stone pillars of the Middle Nave, the receding surface exposed the fluted bases of the Pentelic marble pillars inch by inch, each level releasing a tiny cascade of trapped salt water that tinkled into the drainage gutters like a thousand tiny glass chimes.
Qiao Ming stood at the arched threshold of Entry hall 003, his bare feet planted upon the cold banded limestone doorstep.
Outside, the hall was dim, lit up only by the faint green eerie glow of the dried sea-moss in the wall sconces. He unhooked his eight-sided lead line-weight from his cross-strap, feeling the familiar, reassuring weight of the soft metal in his palm. His knotted horsehair line hung coiled over his left shoulder, supple and greased with fresh sheep fat.
