The high staging of Entry hall 116 hung forty arm-lengths above the water, suspended from the ceiling vaults by twelve massive chains of forged iron whose links were as thick as a man’s thigh.
The staging was built from heavy baulks of stone-hard fir wood, two inches thick and bound with strap-iron, forming a level platform twenty paces long and ten paces wide. From this raised vantage, a land-mapper could look out over the entire expanse of the northern nave, watching the dark water flow through the massive archways like ink sliding across a dark rock slate.
Qiao Ming knelt in the center of the wooden platform, surrounded by the tools of his grand survey. The air up here was dry, carrying only a faint trace of wood-smoke from the slow-burning animal fat lamps he used to light up the staging.
Spread out before him, lit up by three horn lanterns placed at the cardinal points, was the Great Parchment Roll of Ten Thousand Vaults. The roll was thirty arm-lengths long and three arm-lengths wide, made of five layers of pressed mulberry paper treated with linseed oil and ground mica to resist the humid salt rot of the lower halls.
