In the deep silence of the High Siphon Vault, Qiao Ming sat upon a dry block of dressed granite, his bare feet resting in a pool of cold, water drops runoff.
The room was circular, eight paces across, situated in the dead space between the double walls of Entry halls 514 and 515. For three hundred years, this had been his private safe hall during the winter tides. A place where the roar of the outer void was muffled to a faint, rhythmic sigh, and where no draft could put out the flame of his tiny sesame-oil lamp.
On the floor before him lay the Great Parchment Roll of Ten Thousand Vaults.
The parchment was twelve feet long and three feet wide, made from seven layers of beaten shark-skin parchment treated with tung oil and salt. Across its yellowed surface ran thousands of tiny lines drawn in black silt-ink, red stone, and green rust wash. Every channel, every drain tube, every drainage sump, every statue stone base, and every sound chimney pipe across the first five hundred entry halls of the Ark Nadir.
Beside the map lay his tools: the Folded brass star-compass, the twelve-pound six-sided lead sinker, his horn box of rendered sheep fat, and the green rust bone-awl.
