The descent through the drainage water chute lasted forty minutes of knee-straining, nonstop friction.
The stonework channel was barrel-vaulted, barely four feet high and three feet wide. That forced Len, Ivara. Bram to move in a punishing, forward crouch that set the thigh muscles burning with muscle burn. Every twenty paces, the slime on the granite floor gave way to sudden, jagged ridges of dry lime encrustation that caught the welt of the boot like teeth, threatening to pitch the traveler forward onto his knees.
As they dropped deeper into the western strata, the quality of the underground air shifted. The greasy, choking stench of coal-smoke and stale transformer oil from the tram interchange began to fade, replaced by the clean, sharp, stone reek of freshly split limestone and damp quarry chalk. It was a bitter-salt cold that dried the wet inner skin of the nose, tasting of stone flour and cold river gravel.
Every hundred paces, Ivara brought them to a halt.
She would wedge her right hip against the curved wall of the water chute, brace her boots against a mortar joint, and use her land-mapper’s chisel to score a neat, three-inch level notch into the stonework. From her breast pocket, she withdrew a heavy brass-cased survey clinometer. She held the lead line-weight steady against the notched mark. Meanwhile, her thumb adjusted the mirror index.
