Down at the bottom of the iron access ladder, the outer entry hall of Relief Trunk Three was a vaulted limestone gallery nine feet high and fourteen feet wide, stretching twenty-eight meters from the riverward inner wall to the inner stonework weir. The air inside the vault was thick with swirling gray vapor that smelled of boiled river silt, sulfur-tainted lime. The sharp, coppery tang of heated bronze.
Eren Tal and his two apprentice riggers had wedged four heavy ash sleepers across the raised mason’s ledge just inside the access hatch, three inches above the lapping waterline. Upon those timbers stood the portable brass frame of the Courtesy Arch. The deliberate three-inch gaps in its open-circuit runes shone dull gold in the light of three hooded animal fat lanterns hung from the stone wall-brackets.
Examiner Corvin Hest stood cramped on the fourth rung of the iron ladder. He refused to put his polished leather boots into the warm, rusty water washing across the lower flat stone slabs. Auditor Varo Nenn perched beside the arch on an upturned oak bucket. His cloak was tucked carefully around his knees. He held his waterproofed thick parchment ledger open with a brass clip.
“I must formally note for the record that erecting an unlicensed summoning frame inside a town floodway violates three separate academy safety canons,” Corvin said, his voice echoing sharply off the barrel-vaulted ceiling. Water drops dripped from the keystone above, landing squarely on the brim of his felt hat. “Plus, no…
