Entry hall 424 was a soaring hall of classical proportion, thirty-six arm-lengths from its green snake-like floor flags to the apex of its coffered barrel vault.
The ceiling was carved from dense white Carrara marble, divided into two hundred and forty square coffers, each recessed two feet into the stone and decorated with a carved twelve-petaled lotus rosette. Over sixty hundred years, the water drops from the upper chimney pipes had deposited a pale, glistening rind of lime-crystal over the petals, making the ceiling look like an inverted meadow of frozen stone flowers.
Through the upper air-flow angled slats, six aerial scouting drones slipped into the high vault.
They were larger than the scout Yan Zhiqiu had destroyed at the northern pier. Eighteen inches in wingspan, their four counter-rotating mica wings generating a high, ringing whine that filled the vault with a sound like a nest of disturbed hornets. Mounted beneath each brass thorax was a dual-crystal optic prism that swept the floor with alternating needles of emerald and crimson tracking light.
Yan Zhiqiu stood in the deep shadow of the western stone temple steps, her back pressed flat against the fluted face of an engaged pilaster.
Her recurve bow was strung, held at her waist in the low ready position. Between the fingers of her string hand, she held three heavy needle-point arrow arrows fanned out like the ribs of a palm leaf, ready for instant nocking. Her breathing was slow, rhythmic, and shallow, barely disturbing the cold mist…
