Entry hall 414 was an ancient lapidary workshop whose stone benches still held the stone-hard bone chisels, jade polishing wheels, and lead grinding troughs of the First Epoch.
Qiao Ming laid the crushed carcass of the winged drone upon a massive workbench of grey granite. The stone was four arm-lengths long and three spans thick, its surface scarred by thousands of knife cuts and chisel marks made sixty hundred years ago. He unslung his reed basket, taking out his bone scraper, a small pair of iron tongs, and a shallow copper tray filled with clean well-water.
Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu set her lantern upon the corner of the bench, its amber beam lighting up the mangled brass insect.
The drone’s mica wings were cracked like dry leaves, their see-through surfaces rainbow-bright under the lamplight. Through the hole punched by her needle-point arrow, a thick, oily fluid the color of stale river water was slowly oozing onto the granite, giving off a sharp, vinegar-like stench that stung their eyes.
“Handle the core with the iron tongs,” Qiao Ming instructed her quietly. “Do not let the fluid touch bare skin. That is packed burning acid-spirit, distilled from crushed fire-stones and wolframite. If it touches wet flesh, it burns to the bone before a man can wash his hands.”
