The darkness inside the channel was total, thick with the stale heat of boiled sulfur and rotting lotus petals.
Lin Tao clicked the flint wheel on his brass hooded lantern. A narrow slit of yellow light cut through the drifting vapor, lighting up the curving walls of the star-brass drainage pipe. The floor was slick with three inches of gray potion-made sludge, through which sluggish streams of warm runoff flowed toward the flapper gate behind them.
Tie Shan sat against the curved wall, his massive chest heaving as he wiped pungent sludge from his jaw.
“The air tastes like poison,” Tie Shan said. He spat a mouthful of bitter grit onto the floor.
“Potion-made salts and lead oxide,” Lin Tao said, his voice quiet inside the echoing channel. “The court artificers dump their refining wash down the royal drains. Keep your linen scarf pulled over your nose.”
The skin-burning sludge burned through the seams of Lin Tao’s boots, a sharp, stinging prickle of chemical acid eating into the outer leather. He checked his hands. The stone grime was turning the skin of his knuckles yellow with sulfur deposits.
To prevent mental drift from the toxic fumes, Lin Tao unpinned his land-mapper metal pen. He pressed the silver needle tip firmly into the base of his left thumb.
