The ledger in Qiao Ming’s left hand was bound in the tough, pebbled skin of a deep-sea thresher shark, its pages fashioned from thin leaves of grey roofing slate smoothed with foam-stone and grease.
For two hundred years, every entry in this book had been written in the crisp, measured strokes of soapstone pencil: water levels at the seventh hour of the moon-tide line-up tide. The settling of the foundation piers by tiny fractions of an inch over decades. The growth of black mussel colonies upon the ankles of the stone patriarchs. It was the nonstop chronicle of a quiet, enduring house.
Now, as his bare feet waded through ankle-deep drifts of grey and white stone-flour across the floor of Entry hall 323, the entries he made were of a different nature.
“Statue #0514,” Qiao Ming said softly, his soapstone pencil scratching against the wet slate. “The Sounder of Shoals. Grey andesite. Carved during the Second Flooding. Lower jaw, left collar bone, and sounding lead fully dissolved. Internal core hollowed out to sixty percent. Bearing capacity reduced by four tons.”
Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu held an iron lantern whose flame was shielded by thin sheets of semi-clear horn, casting a warm amber circle across the mutilated face of the statue. The Sounder of Shoals stood eight arm-lengths tall, his stone arms once frozen in the act of casting a knotted line into an ancient sea. Now, his hands were jagged stumps of chalky rock, and where his calm, bearded mouth…
