The ink on the town grain ledger was still wet when the second blast wave hit.
Giles Croft stood on the western canal embankment at Mile Eighty-Four. He watched a three-inch fissure open across the heavy concrete towpath.
Beneath the dark water of the blood canal, the upright concrete lining panels groaned under massive lateral earth pressure. It spat clouds of powdery grey mortar into the flow.
Beside Giles, Toby Karr knelt with a brass fine-scale measuring tongs, measuring the widening crack.
“The crack opened three-point-four tiny fractions of an inch in the last ten minutes, Lord Baron,” Toby reported, his voice tense.
“The concrete retaining wall on the north bank has tilted one degree inward.
If the ground base liquefies, sixty feet of embankment will slide into the ditch and drain twenty miles of navigation pool.”
“The ground base isn’t liquefying,” Giles said, inspecting the posture with his transit. “This is brittle shear failure caused by deep earth-shaking crustal movement.
