The heavy calfskin route pouch didn’t drop into the churning black water chute.
It tumbled through four feet of cold sulfur mist, its cut steer-hide harness whistling through the damp air. Then it struck the narrow stone ledge of the overflow weir with a dull, heavy slap. The book landed flat in three inches of stale silt and black iron settled mud, the brass lock-plate half-sunk, the calfskin cover splashed with greasy drainage slime. The brass corners, filed smooth by Deren Vey six years earlier to prevent snagging on woolen mail sacks, gouged a shallow furrow through the algae before coming to rest against an unmortared granite riser.
Len Vey saw the book land from the corner of his blurred vision, and for a split second, he believed the falling weight of the pouch would drag him downward into the water after it. The harness had been cinched tight across his chest cage. The carbon-steel blade sliced through the layered cowhide. Then, the sudden release of tension should have cast his torso free.
He didn’t fall.
In the same split second that the steer-hide parted under the knife, the double’s left hand reacted with the blinding, inhuman reflexes of an entity backed by eight claimant milestones.
