Captain Ansgar Rook had been a hired man for twenty years, and in that time he had learned the difference between a bank worth holding and a gate worth keeping. The sluice was the first sort. It was a raised stone bank on the far side of the water, with a good footing under it and a clear line of sight down the channel, and it had a wheel and a leaf and a chain, which meant that whoever held it could decide how much water went down the road and when.
He set his twelve men on the bank above the reeds before the light was full. He had them lay the cart’s rope in coils along the top of the stone, with the hemp dry and easy to reach. He had the hinges fitted first, because the leaf would not lift without them and the Forge’s men had been right about the pin. Then he had the new lock-bar brought up from the cart and laid across the sluice-house threshold, and he told his men to keep their heads down and their hands on the wheel, and to keep their eyes on the water.
“And not on the Chancery,” said Rook. “The Chancery will have a clerk up on the causeway with a glass. Let him look. He cannot read a sluice from that far off.”
