The Central Safe hall was an eight-sided hall of white crystal-clear pale limestone, eighty paces across, crowned by a shallow dome that gathered the underground water drops into a central copper funnel.
Around the outer edge sat eight huge figures of the First Council, their folded hands resting upon their stone laps, their hooded heads bowed in unending vigil. At the center of the hall. There, the floor rose in three nested steps to a raised dark rock dais, stood Qiao Ming.
He was alone on the flags.
His bare calloused feet were planted upon the central drain-ring, feeling the deep, rhythmic surge of the oceanic tide seventy-nine arm-lengths below. His oilskin coat was buttoned tight to the neck. His salt-stained hands held the knotted lead line, its braided hemp cord drawn taut through his fingers. Beside his right heel rested the folded brass star-compass, its indices locked to the map points of the mid-winter neap tide.
Down the wide processional avenue from the western entry hall marched fifty elite shock-fighters of the Obsidian Scroll hall.
These were the Scholar’s personal guards: veterans of the northern border wars, their bodies wrapped in overlapping plates of blackened soul-iron. In their right hands they carried heavy six-foot axe-spears with barbed lunar blades. At their belts hung iron canisters containing volatile soul-fire crystals. Unlike the panic-stricken auxiliaries who had fled from the weeping statues, these men moved with cold, clockwork discipline, their iron boots crashing through the knee-deep water all at once.
