On the fourth evening of her residence in Entry hall 003, two ledgers lay side by side upon the black walnut table between the two survivors.
The first was Qiao Ming’s slate workbook. Its heavy covers were bound in cured sharkskin, its pages composed of thin sheets of grey metamorphic slate cut cleanly with the neat, upright characters of a deep-sea water mapper. It recorded two hundred and forty seasons of tidal soundings, settled mud analyses, and the physical upkeep logs of twenty thousand stone giant statues sleeping within the central rows of stone pillars.
The second was a small, tightly rolled scroll of royal micro-silk that Yan Zhiqiu had unstitched from the hidden lining of her courier sash. The silk was pale yellow, thin as a cicada’s wing, covered in millions of tiny characters brushed in red stone ink. The master demographic audit of the Southern Heavens before the Nine Great Sects let loose the Fire-Arrays.
Qiao Ming sat upon his driftwood stool, his bare feet resting flat upon the soapstone apron, his Folded brass star-compass held open in his palm. The fire in the salt-kiln was burning with a steady, quiet warmth, casting long, solemn shadows across the glow-stone bases.
