Entry hall 310 was known as the Hypostyle of the Thousand Scribes, an orderly forest of grey limestone where one thousand statues stood in ten long ranks, their heads bowed over stone desks. Their hands held stylized bone styluses that had not moved since the world underwater.
As Qiao Ming walked down the central aisle between the third and fourth ranks, his bare soles felt a strange shaking through the floor. It wasn’t the solid, ringing recoil of five hundred tons of dense limestone resting upon living bedrock. It was a dull, papery rattle, like dry corn husks trembling in an autumn gale.
He paused before Scribe #0412.
The figure was carved to life-size proportions, dressed in the simple pleated robe of a royal water-mapping registrar. To an untrained eye, the statue appeared untouched by the plague of stone-rot. Its smooth grey brow was intact. The delicate folds of its sleeves showed no signs of surface flaking off. Its stone fingers remained curled gracefully around the metal pen.
Yet Qiao Ming did not trust appearances. A land-mapper looked not with his eyes, but with the sound feedback of mass and tension.
He unhooked his twelve-pound plumb-bob from his harness. He held the lead bob by its horsehair lanyard. He extended his arm and gently tapped the left shoulder of Scribe #0412 with the flat facet of the weight.
