To reach the bottom of the grinding basin, Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu had to go down an ancient iron upkeep ladder bolted into the curved hard black rock retaining wall.
The ladder was slick with cold salt-frost and green algae. But Qiao Ming climbed down with the agile, barefoot certainty of a man who had spent his youth scaling the upright sounding shafts of the lower keel. Yan Zhiqiu followed three rungs above him, her recurve bow slung across her shoulders, her boots finding each cold iron rung with deliberate care.
They stepped off the ladder onto the stone floor of the basin.
The water here was knee-deep—a dense, milky slurry of crushed stone halite and cold sea-salt water that stung the cuts on Yan Zhiqiu’s fingers with an intense, icy bite. everyone could feel the scent of crushed stone, cold iron, and the sharp, vinegar-like odor of dead spirit-oil leaking from the ruined hound.
Three paces before them, pinned beneath the stationary face of the second granite millstone, lay the defeated behemoth.
Qiao Ming had engaged the emergency brake lever on the wall before dropping, locking the sixteen-foot pelton wheel with a six-inch bronze dog. The twelve-arm-length granite roller stood motionless, its massive weight resting directly across the Alpha Hound’s crushed spine, pinning the machine like an insect beneath an anvil.
