The surrounding heat within the writing hall had plummeted to four degrees above freezing. With the breach of Entry hall 492, the cold deep-sea salt water had flooded the intermediate earth-heat radiator ducts, extinguishing the thermosiphon heat-exchangers that had kept the chamber’s warmth for ten thousand years. A heavy, damp chill crept along the white marble floor flags, coating the edges of the whale-bone desks in a fine, greasy rime of condensed moisture.
In the northern nook, a circular bronze fire bowl stood upon three clawed feet. Yan Zhiqiu knelt before it, her fingers stiff and numb with cold, striking a spark with a flint-and-steel against a pad of charred linen. The spark caught three times. It glowed with a faint orange ember, only to die in the oxygen-empty cold air that still filled the vault.
“Catch, damn you,” she whispered through chattering teeth, blowing gently upon the tinder with her warm breath. Her eyes watered from the sulfur smoke. Her fingers were trembling so wildly that the steel striker slipped from her grasp, clattering against the bronze rim of the fire bowl.
Beside her, Qiao Ming sat leaning against the cold dark rock wall, shivering with slow, deep, rhythmic tremors. His skin had taken on a dull, cyanotic pallor. His lips were blue, his knuckles bloodless as chalk. Without his oilskin coat—which remained draped across his lap—his bare torso was fully exposed to the humid drafts that whistled through the ceiling chimney pipes. Yet he made no move to…
