In an ocean of infinite salt water, fresh water was the quiet miracle of the upper vaults.
Seawater was everywhere: filling the lower hypostyles twice every twenty-eight hours, foaming through the deck drains, weeping down the rust-streaked cramps of ancient stonework, and leaving its grey, acid-burning crust upon every top door beam that faced the wind. But water that did not burn the tongue, water that could wash salt from an open eyelid or moisten very thirsty barley, had to be harvested drop by drop from the faces of the dead.
Qiao Ming entered Entry hall 004 through an archway draped in dry, papery sheets of dried sea-lettuce.
The chamber was round, fifty paces across, centered upon an eight-sided dry water tank sunk ten steps into the pale limestone floor. Unlike the grand walkway of the third hall, no howling drafts climbed here. The air was still and cool, carrying the faint, earthy fragrance of damp chalk and the subtle floral sweetness of white moss. High above, near the circular lantern dome that pierced the ceiling, cold drafts from the northern cloud-track collided with the warmer air of the middle nave, causing an unending shroud of fine silver mist to swirl beneath the keystone.
Circling the dry water tank stood seven statues of white Carrara marble, each twenty arm-lengths tall.
They were known as the Weeping Scribes. Carved in the likeness of ancient judges, their faces were bowed slightly forward. Their stone hoods cast deep shadows over eyes that were closed in unending contemplation. Their sculpted hands were joined before their waists in the stance of scholars listening to a verdict, sleeves falling in elegant folds toward their bare marble feet.
Because their marble was denser and colder than the surrounding limestone, the mist dropping from the lantern dome condensed upon their crowns and foreheads.
The water gathered in tiny beads, trickled down the smooth arches of their eyebrows, and followed the carved furrows of their cheeks until it reached the lower curve of their lips. From the center of each chin, a clear drop fell every four breaths, dropping twenty feet into the bronze catch-basins set on the floor beneath their stone stands.
Along these moisture channels, a delicate white lichen had grown for uncounted hundreds of years.
It was a crustose lichen as pale as sea-foam, growing in nested circular colonies no thicker than parchment. It was neither mold nor weed. It fed purely upon the dissolved minerals of the stone and the moisture of the clouds. The water drops trickled across its velvety surface. Then, the lichen filtered out every trace of airborne salt, imparting to the water a faint, stone sweetness reminiscent of crushed almonds and winter snow.
Qiao Ming set his reed basket upon the edge of the water tank and knelt upon the dry flags.
His bare soles were stained with the grey dust of the third entry hall. He untied his leather water-skin, removed the wooden peg, and drew from his basket two cracked celadon saucers and a funnel rolled from cured birch-bark.
He approached the first scribe on the eastern outer edge: the Scholar of the Western Boundary.
The catch-basin at the scribe’s feet was a shallow bowl of beaten green bronze, three arm-lengths across, resting upon three clawed feet. Inside the bowl, the collected water drops lay three inches deep—a sheet of liquid crystal so still it reflected the dark curve of the dome above.
Qiao Ming did not plunge his leather skin directly into the basin. To stir the water with dry hide would disturb the fine settlement of white spar-stone dust that rested at the bottom. Instead, he dipped a celadon saucer beneath the surface with a slow, gliding motion, skimming only the top inch of water.
He brought the saucer to his lips and tasted it.
The water was ice-cold, sliding across his tongue with a crisp, limestone cleanness that banished the lingering metal tang of the morning sounding. There was no sulfur, no bitterness, no salt water. The lichen had done its work with patient perfection.
“Sweet water,” he whispered, glancing up at the scribe’s shadowed mouth. “The northern clouds have been clean this morning, brother. No storm-ash from the rifts.”
With steady hands, Qiao Ming poured the saucer through the birch-bark funnel into his water-skin. The liquid made a clear, musical gurgle inside the cured bladder. He repeated the motion forty times, moving from the first basin to the second, until both of his travel skins were plump and heavy.
When his skins were filled, he carefully topped up the small earthen jar that he kept reserved for tending the dead. This jar was glazed with brown iron-slip and plugged with a soft cork of rolled dried bladderwrack. It carried the pure drops that he would take later to the dry alcoves of the upper tier.
Once the harvest was completed, Qiao Ming did not leave. The gathering of water was only half his duty in the fourth entry hall.
He unfastened his boar-bristle brush and a flat wooden scraping blade from his tool harness. Then he walked to the base of the Scholar of the Western Boundary’s stone stand.
While the heads and shoulders of the scribes were nourished by sweet water drops, their lower limbs were exposed to the damp maritime air that crept along the floor from the next-door halls. Over weeks of tidal cycles, fine salt aerosols settled into the marble. Where the dampness evaporated during the low-tide drafts, crystals of halite blossomed in the recessed carvings of their feet, forming hard, chalky rimes between the toes and around the toenails.
Left untended, these salt crystals would grow and expand with every shift in humidity, exerting clockwork pressure that would eventually spall the delicate marble, flaking away the skin of the statues until only pitted stumps remained.
Qiao Ming knelt before the statue’s right foot.
The foot was three arm-lengths long, carved with veins that branched across the instep like frozen tributaries. Between the great toe and the second digit, a thick wedge of white salt had hardened into a crust the color of curdled milk.
Qiao Ming dipped the bristle brush into a shallow saucer of fresh water drops. He never used seawater for this task. To clean salt with salt water was merely to invite heavier crusting on the morrow.
He touched the wet bristles to the salt crust.
The pure water right away began to dissolve the crystal-clear bonds. With gentle, rhythmic sweeps, Qiao Ming brushed the softening salt away from the seam. His movements were slow, measured, and unrushed. He held the flat wooden blade in his left hand, using it to scrape away the loosened slurry before it could run down the stone base and stain the green veined stone floor.
“You have been standing in the draft again,” Qiao Ming murmured as the bristles hissed across the stone. “The wind through the southern arch has more salt in it this season. If you don’t turn your shoulder, your heel will be as grey as an oyster shell before the winter orb arrives.”
The statue stood motionless. High above, another drop of sweet water fell from its chin, striking the bronze basin with a ringing clink that echoed around the round hall.
Qiao Ming worked with patient devotion. From the great toe to the small, he cleared every crevice, wiping the polished marble with a piece of clean linen until the pale stone showed its delicate grey grain once more. He moved to the second scribe, then the third.
At the fourth scribe—the Scholar of the Silted Balance—the crust was thicker. An entire collar of white salt had ringed the ankle. There, the stone hem of the robe met the skin.
Here, Qiao Ming spent nearly a quarter of an hour, carefully moistening the ring with water droplets from his fingertip, softening the stone scale until it yielded without resisting. When the last flake of salt fell into his palm, he found the stone beneath fully intact, smooth as polished bone.
He sighed with quiet relief, wiped the stone dry, and leaned back on his haunches.
His own bare feet were cold against the flags, but his hands were warm from the labor. He reached into his coat and withdrew the Folded brass star-compass to record the morning’s yield and verify the water-system balance of the water tank.
He set the star compass upon the flat margin of the third catch-basin. He opened the lower water-pressure dial. He pushed in the tiny bronze dip-wire into the water, observing the water’s skin where the liquid met the metal.
The fine-scale markings clicked into posture.
The readings were clean. The water drops had not degraded, and the water in the basins remained balanced.
Qiao Ming folded the brass dial, secured the catch with its silver pin, and returned the star compass to its oiled pouch.
He gathered his brushes, dried the birch-bark funnel with a scrap of wool, and packed everything back into the reed basket. His water-skins were slung over his left shoulder, counterbalancing the eight-pound lead line-weight on his right hip. The added weight pressed his soles firmly into the pale limestone floor, making his step deliberate and sure.
Before stepping toward the exit, he walked once around the outer edge of the water tank, inspecting each of the seven scribes from crown to foot.
Their faces remained half-veiled in shadow, their lips eternally wet with the falling drops of the clouds. Their bare marble feet, now clean of white crust, shone softly in the grey twilight of the round hall.
“Rest comfortably, brothers,” Qiao Ming said, bowing his head toward the central arch. “The water is gathered. The salt is cast away. The House remains peaceful.”
He turned southward. The path ahead climbed out of the lower round hall via a broad ramp of rusticated limestone, heading toward Entry hall 005 and the high sky clockworks that measured the drift of the stars.