The chime returned half a breath before it was expected.
In Entry hall 844, a vast transverse deep gap eighty paces wide cut the violet-black plain of starlight ice. When Qiao Ming uncoiled the Knotted Horsehair Sounding Line and tapped the eight-sided lead line-weight against the ice rim, the sound that traveled across the gulf did not loiter in the air. It struck the opposite wall and returned with the unnatural, snapping rapidity of a bowstring loosed in a tight room.
“Sound travels fast in cold air,” Qiao Ming said, his voice flat beneath the woolen scarf wrapped around his jaw.
He stood barefoot at the edge of the deep gap, his calloused soles protected from flash-frost by the thick golden caulking of mountain-ram animal fat and sea-silk byssus. The paste held firm, its amber sheen glistening in the lantern beam like a coat of cured resin. The bitter draft off the gulf was ninety degrees below zero, but his feet felt only a distant, dull pressure, the heat of his blood trapped securely within his bone marrow.
Yan Zhiqiu knelt beside him, her boots heavily bundled in greased canvas. She held her lantern low over the lip, peering down into the violet-black gulf.
