The sound of the sounding gong at the threshold of Entry hall 016 did not carry the shrill clangor of war.
It was a deep, chest-ringing stroke of cast sea-bronze that shook through the foundation flags of the Grand Arch like the low song of a migrating whale. For three leagues in every direction, through the vaulted halls of the outer halls and into the wide, dark expanses of the inner courtyards, the sound wave rolled without diminishing, washing away the wild clamor of ten million voices with a single, unrushed breath of living stone.
On the high cut-stone platform of the Silt-Keepers, eighty arm-lengths above the processional avenue, Qiao Ming stood with bare, calloused feet planted firmly upon the carved pale limestone flags.
His yellow-amber oilskin coat, darkened by sea-salt and patched with cured sharkskin, hung straight in the rising warm draft from the lower keel. His hair, bound with a strip of oiled rawhide, was touched with frosty white salt water dust. Across his chest ran the dark leather harness bearing his slate ledgers and bone styluses. In his right hand rested the eight-sided lead line-weight, its horsehair line trailing sixty deep-water lengths down through a bronze guide-ring set into the dais.
