The morning tide abandoned the lower stepped stone bases forty minutes before the petrels stirred along the upper top stone ledge. That left behind an unfamiliar silence that clung to the pale limestone flags like dry frost.
Qiao Ming stood on the twentieth terrace of Entry hall 301. There, the outer row of stone pillars opened toward the vast eastern cross-halls of the Tomb hall of Sovereign Memories. His soles were bare, calloused and wide, the hardened skin of his prehensile toes curling over the margin of the wet step. For twenty years his arches had known every texture of the House: the cold, slick glaze of green sea-glass specks. The rough, crystal-clear bite of sea salt encrusting the drainage grates. The smooth, wax-like water-sheen of Pentelic marble polished by ten thousand seasonal surges.
Yet today, as his heel met the stone floor, the sensation under his skin was wrong.
There was no damp pushback. There was no cold stone suction between his skin and the stone. Instead, his foot settled into a dry, flour-like drift that puffed outward in a faint, powdery cloud around his ankle, settling into the hair on his shins like grey fiery ash.
He paused, lowering his balance point. His amber oilskin coat, stiffened by boiled linseed and patched at the right elbow with tough grey sharkskin, rustled softly against his greased bridle-leather harness. The copper buckles on his chest, green with green rust, chimed against the bone metal pen tucked into his bandolier.
