For thirty-five years, Qiao Ming’s stride had been a total unit of linear measurement. A standard land-mapper’s pace: exactly two feet and six inches from the ball of the left foot to the heel of the right, measured across wet silt, broken shingle, slippery kelp, or polished marble. He had walked forty thousand leagues without varying that rhythm by the thickness of an oyster shell. When he paced a hall, he didn’t need a land-mapper’s rod. His feet were the rod, tuned by decades of sounding the drowned world.
Now, as he rose from his knees in the center of the writing hall, that clockwork rhythm broke.
His left foot moved forward, dragging the calloused outer edge of his sole along the red stone rim of the well. The stride fell short by eight inches. When his right foot followed, it landed awkwardly on the heel, scuffing the white marble with a harsh, uneven screech that echoed off the vaulted ceiling like a broken axle. He swayed to the left, his shoulder striking the bronze upright of the fifth stone stand.
“Qiao Ming!” Yan Zhiqiu sprang forward, her hands catching his thick oilskin coat at the elbow. She felt the heavy, uncontrolled tremor in his muscular frame—a deep, gut-deep shudder that seemed to originate in the very marrow of his thighbones.
