The dry drain tube chamber beneath Entry hall 528 was the quietest place leftover in the Fifth Tier.
Located forty feet below the main traffic avenues, this circular vault of dressed hard speckled rock had served as an air-lock for the central ballast pipe hubs during the Second Epoch. Its walls were four paces thick, lined with linked courses of grey dark rock held together by cold-run lead joints. No air-flow chimney pipes connected directly to this chamber. The air was cool, smelling of ancient lime-wash, dry shale, and the faint, dusty fragrance of pressed barley that Qiao Ming had stored in an earthen crock two hundred years before.
In the center of the chamber, Qiao Ming sat upon the floor, his bare legs crossed in the traditional stance of the deep-sea sounders.
He had removed his oilskin coat, laying its salt-stiffened fabric across his lap. His bare chest and shoulders, scarred by barnacles and cord-burns, glistened with a light film of cold sweat. In his hands, he held the sixty-fathom horsehair lead line, uncoiling the braided cord fathom by fathom across his knees, inspecting every knot, every tally, and every horsehair splice with his sensitive fingertips.
Yan Zhiqiu sat opposite him, her back resting against the heavy bronze access hatch that sealed the chamber from the outer chimney pipes. She had placed the Broken Slate flat upon the floor between them. She used a small horn scraper to clean away the yellow soot and acid-mud that had piled up…
