When the bowls were cleaned and set to dry upon the cedar rack, a quiet stillness settled over Entry hall 003.
The peat fire in the salt-kiln had burned down to a thick, radiant bed of scarlet embers that cast a warm, unrushed glow across the green glow-stone bases and the dark soapstone arches. Outside in the great hall, the tide had reached high slack. It held seventy deep-water lengths of lightless water in suspended balance, muffling every sound from the outer universe until the only rhythm leftover was the slow, steady breath of the stone lung.
Yan Zhiqiu rose from her stool.
She walked to the glow-stone berth where she had rested since her arrival. From the floor beside the stone base, where it had rolled after she released it during the morning face-off, she retrieved the broken stump of her shale dagger.
The fragment was barely three inches long, its tip shattered against Qiao Ming’s bronze harness buckle, its edges rough and powdered with white quartz dust. It was the weapon with which she had intended to kill him. It was the weapon with which she had intended to end her own life if capture became total.
She walked back to the hearth, holding the broken stone in her open right palm.
