Entry hall 440 was a grand, vaulted lab eighty arm-lengths long and forty arm-lengths wide, lit up by the warm, constant amber glow of six large baked-clay animal fat vats whose wicks had burned without interruption since the Second Dynasty.
The air in this hall was dry, fragrant with cedar oil, beeswax, and powdered slate, fully padded from the freezing damp and rotten-egg fumes of the lower heavy-duty chambers. Along the eastern wall stood four massive workbenches carved from solid blocks of white Parian marble, their polished surfaces fitted with bronze vices, slate grinding beds, and care dividing engines used by the ancient astronomers of the First Epoch.
Qiao Ming wheeled the stone hand-barrow into the center of the workshop, halting beside the largest marble bench.
He unslung his reed basket, setting it upon the clean stone with a sigh of deep, earned relief. Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu unslung her recurve bow and her quiver of three leftover needle-point arrow arrows, laying the weapons with deep awe upon an ash tool-shelf.
She wiped her brow with a clean linen towel, looking around the peaceful, orderly safe hall of the workshop.
“A place of scholarship,” she said, her voice filled with deep thanks. “After the roar of the millstones and the stench of burning acid, this hall feels like the royal academy of my youth.”
