On the count of three, they turned.
Len Vey threw his entire torso into the rotation of his right arm, planting his boots into the slick gravel of the flooded stone stand. His left forearm, strapped rigid in its cedar splints, pressed hard against his ribs. It sent a throb of dull ache through his between-rib muscles, but he ignored the pain. His right hand locked around the polished brass bow of Magistrate Pell’s override key, twisting clockwise toward the channel wall with every ounce of physical strength his Level Five baseline endurance could muster.
Across the stone stand, Bram Ash drove his sound left shoulder downward into the bronze bow of the Tram delegate key, his knuckles whitening as he forced the heavy three-notched bit counter-clockwise toward the dark rock wall.
For one painful second, the iron gearwork inside the boiler plate casing screamed in clockwork protest.
Ten winters of hardened mutton grease, crushed coal dust, and green copper rusting had frozen the bronze linkages of the differential rocker into a solid mass. The keys turned twenty degrees through their arcs. Then he struck an unbending internal pushback that brought both men to a dead halt. The bronze bows bit viciously into their palms, refusing to budge past the quarter-turn mark.
