The false dawn did not arrive from the sky, for in the sunken halls of the Drowned Dao there was neither sun nor horizon to herald the morning. Daylight within the giant stone chambers was merely the slow, eerie-glowing awakening of the ceiling lichen fifty deep-water lengths overhead. That cold blue soft glow crept across the fluted pale limestone ribs like frost forming on iron.
Qiao Ming rose from the damp flags of Entry hall 001 three breaths before the third drainage bell sounded in the lower channels.
He stood motionless for a long moment upon the edge of the fifth terrace, allowing the deep stone chill of the wet stone to seep into his bare soles. His feet were wide and flat, the skin of his heels yellowed and hardened by years of gripping algae-slick banded limestone and salt-bitten stepped stone bases. For seven hundred days he had worn the heavy, salt-stiffened oilskin coat that was the uniform of the Fathom-Scribes, its lapels reeking of cured fish oil, amber resin, and cold lime. This morning, however, the oilskin coat lay neatly folded upon a dry granite bench beside the stone base of the Patriarch.
He wore only a tunic of coarse grey linen, frayed at the collar and bleached by salt water until it was the color of winter sea-foam. The sleeves were rolled securely above his elbows, tied with strips of cured leather to keep his forearms free. Across his chest ran his single leather cross-strap, darkened by…
