The spray of skin-burning aqua regia did not announce itself with a roar. It hissed across the dark stone like a striking serpent.
In the confusion of the burst air-powered line, a backup pressure relief valve on the Grand Borer’s backup acid tank blew out its copper seal ring. A jagged jet of boiling burning acid, atomized into a fine, needle-like spray by the seventy-pound head-pressure, shot sideways across eight paces of open floor. It caught Qiao Ming as he pivoted to face the charging Scholar.
The acid struck the left sleeve of his oilskin coat.
For five hundred years, that heavy canvas garment had protected the land-mapper against the freezing spray of forty leagues of deep ocean salt water, the bitter scraper-dust of dry catacombs, and the stinging bite of cave sand. It was soaked with boiled linseed oil, beeswax, and the rendered fat of deep-sea seals, layered into a stiff, iron-hard armor that had turned the claws of rock-crabs and the edges of falling slate.
Against packed potion-made burning acid, the organic wax and boiled oil burned.
The canvas turned black instantly, smoking with a sharp, sickening stench of scorched animal fat and charred linen. The acid ate through the triple-stitched shoulder-seam in three seconds, bubbling into a frothing yellow paste that dissolved the outer layers of fabric and bit directly into the bare skin of Qiao Ming’s left forearm.
