On the fifth terrace of the Great Silt Plaza, tucked beneath the sheltered overhang of the upper aqueduct, lay the main refugee sick room.
For three weeks, this corner of the Ark had been a safe hall of muffled agony. Here, four hundred and eighty children lay upon beds of dry sea-grass and coarse hemp blankets, their bodies ravaged by the damp rot of the lower decks. Their skin was cracked and inflamed by the acid-burning salt spray. Their small chests wheezed with the choking, rattling cough that the refugees called the “salt water-fever.” Exhausted mortal healers from the coastal sects had worked until their hands were blistered and their spirit-cores empty, able to do little more than sponge the children’s burning foreheads with bitter water. The air had been thick with the sour stench of vomit, burning vinegar, and hopeless fear.
The warm heat-rising drafts from the awakened drydocks reached the fifth terrace. Then, the shadows beneath the aqueduct began to dissolve into soft, rose-colored light.
Down the wide cut stone steps came the Matriarchs of the Second Epoch.
There were one hundred and twenty of them. Semi-clear, glowing women dressed in the graceful, layered silk robes of the ancient river-clans. Their hair was bound with carved combs of white river-jade and mother-of-pearl. In life, before they had chosen turning to stone in Entry halls 040 through 060, they had been the chief physicians, herbalists, and clan-mothers of the Southern Delta. Their faces were not the idealized masks of…
