The gathering on the lowest terrace of the avenue began before the second ring of the animal fat lamps had burned away.
Three thousand four hundred people sat upon the broad granite steps, their figures wrapped in ragged wool and mats of dried river-reed. They had arranged themselves not by military rank or training sect, for the great sects and royal houses had long since drowned in the lower depths, but by the ancient guilds of their common life. The weavers sat on the left, their shuttles and bone combs tucked into their sashes. The stone-masons sat on the right, their iron mallets and tooth-chisels laid across their knees. The farmers and fishermen occupied the center, their rough hands scarred by salt-blisters and hoe-calluses.
At the base of the terrace, standing upon the dry floor between the first two dark rock pillars, Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu waited.
Qiao Ming had laid his surveying tools upon a low cut stone base: the boxwood measuring rule, the Folded brass star-compass, the ox-bone reel of the sounding line, and the small horn pot of animal fat. Beside them rested Yan Zhiqiu’s Broken Slate, its newly inked stone carvings glistening with a deep, black glass sheen under the lantern light.
