A boundary line without a ledger is merely a scratch in the dirt.
At the threshold of Entry hall 100. There, the black dark rock of the outer rows of stone pillars met the white halite doorstep of the Inward Horizon, Qiao Ming knelt before the great stone tablet of the Border Registers. The tablet was four arm-lengths tall, carved from dense fiery slate, its surface cut cleanly with sixty upright columns of names. The record of every sovereign, envoy, and land-mapper who had been granted passage through the star-jade gates since the First Epoch.
The last entry had been chiseled four thousand years ago, recording the passage of the Cartographer Caspian the Elder.
Qiao Ming held his bone-awl in his right hand and his iron hammer in his left.
By the light of his horn lantern, he began to chisel a new stone carving into the smooth slate:
BY ORDER OF THE Water-scribe’S GUILD · SEVENTY-FIRST SEAT.
LET IT BE RECORDED THAT JI MINGCHUAN OF THE CLOUD PEAK Scroll hall, STYLED “THE SCHOLAR,” ENTERED THIS Safe hall WITH ACID AND THEFT IN HIS SLEEVES.
HE SOUGHT THE SKY-IRON CHISEL OF MASTER MASON LU TO FUEL THE SLAUGHTER OF HIS EXODUS FLEET.
