At the entrance end of the flooded gallery, Examiner Corvin Hest gripped the wet iron stiles of the access ladder until his knuckles showed white through his thin leather gloves. Twenty-eight meters away, through the drifting ribbons of rotten-egg vapor, Ada stood knee-deep in the surging brown water before the granite weir. She tapped her steel rod against the right-hand bridge pillar stones.
“A lateral breach?” Corvin repeated, his voice rising half an octave as it bounced off the dripping limestone vault. “That’s a baseless fabrication! I personally audited the College of Pipes’ underground upkeep ledgers before leaving the Registrar’s Office at eleven o’clock. According to the sworn certificates signed by Rector Davin Sorell and three senior fabricators, the entire thirty-yard approach apron of Trunk Three silted solid to the crown within six months of the post-flood closure. The ledger states there are four hundred tons of compacted river clay occupying the very space you’re standing in!”
Ada lowered her steel sounding rod and looked back down the long, glistening tunnel of black water.
“Well, son,” Ada called back, her Yorkshire deadpan cutting cleanly through the humid rumble of the floor, “unless I’ve suddenly learned how to wade waist-deep through solid brick clay, your Rector’s ledger is useful only for wrapping fish and chips. Get down off that ladder and bring your ledger over here.”
