The memory of violence lingers in stone long after the blood has dried.
In Entry hall 128, Qiao Ming spent the three hours of the low-water turn performing the purification of the stonework. He didn’t use incantations or spiritual magic charms. The only purification recognized by the Guild of Water-scribes was the physical restoration of the shape.
He knelt upon the granite flags before Master Mason Lu, his horn lantern resting upon a dry wooden block beside him.
With his small copper chisel and wooden mallet, he carefully dressed the scars left by the Scholar’s assault. Wherever the potion-made burning acid had pitted the granite of the stone base, he chiseled away the spongy, acid-burned stone until he reached solid, healthy rock. Then, he took a lump of high-pressure volcanic cement mortar mixed with sheep fat and crushed glow-stone. He packed the wounds flush with the surface, smoothing the patches with his moistened thumb until the repairs were invisible beneath the gray patina.
He turned to the mason’s carved right hand.
The stone thumb, which had been within a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch of chemical dissolving, was sound. The bone-mortar joint he had packed earlier had hardened under the damp draft, holding the Primordial Sky-Iron Chisel in an unmoving grip.
