The air inside the connecting gallery between Entry halls 302 and 304 tasted of powdered flint and vinegar.
It wasn’t the damp, briny draft that normally washed through the pillared hall vaults at half-tide. When the sea withdrew, it left the clean stone odor of cold granite and the sharp tang of dried bladderwrack. Now, with every stride Qiao Ming took along the row of stone pillars, the drafts that swept down from the upper air-flow angled slats blew dry and acrid. He carried a fine grit that pricked his eyes and crunched between his teeth.
His bare feet moved without sound along the pale limestone stone floor, leaving pale, dusty outlines on the dark, water-worn slabs. Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu kept pace, her scarred hands resting upon the rawhide straps of the broken slate on her back. Her breathing was shallow, rhythmic, tuned to the rhythm of long marches through hostile territory.
“The swarm moved faster than your soundings predicted,” she said, her voice barely louder than the dry rasp of the ceiling drafts. “They didn’t linger in the outer water tanks. Zhu Heling knows the layout of the outer rings better than we thought.”
“The outer rings have sixty under-road drains,” Qiao Ming replied, his eyes scanning the shadow beneath the vaulted ribs sixty arm-lengths overhead. “Thirty are silted solid with pre-flood gravel. Twenty-two are barred with bronze grates. Only eight lead directly into the pillared hall galleries without passing through underwater drain tube traps. He found the…
