Len stood between the lock housings on the central weir narrow high walkway, his boots slipping on the oily river scum that coated the iron grating. In his right hand, the brass pocket watch ticked with the rapid, tinny rhythm of a clockwork heart. His left arm, locked still in its split-ash splints, throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic pulse that mirrored the heavy churning of the weir pool forty feet below.
“Hold the positions!” Ivara Quill’s voice screamed from the upper instrument gallery, slicing through the bone-shaking roar of cascading water. She leaned over the iron rail. Her sound right hand pressed a brass check lamp against the glass column of the liquid silver pressure gauge. “The bypass slope is swaying! Four-tenths of a bar variance! If you turn the keys while the column is swinging, the bronze sleeves will shear!”
Below the gallery, Nessa Tern and Corin Petch remained frozen at their stations. Six paces separated the two lock cylinders on the faceplate of the River Ward Claimant Cabinet. On the left, Nessa’s rough palms gripped the crossbar of the bronze Delegate Seal. Her woolen apron was soaked with cold spray, her gray hair plastered to her skull in damp cords. On the right, Corin Petch leaned his entire upper body against the six-sided steel shaft of the Magistracy Override Key. His knuckles were bloodless, his glasses fogged with white sulfur steam.
