Three hundred feet above the drowned slate roofs of Lowbank, in the eight-sided glass lantern of the High Terrace Star tower, Rector Davin Sorell stood before the master control valve desk of the Hollow Crown. The chamber didn’t smell of harbor mud or boiled animal fat. It smelled of warmed beeswax, ozone, and the dry cedarwood cabinets housing the College’s brass manometers. Outside the tall mullioned panes, the midday rain swept across the white granite plazas of the upper ward, washing harmlessly into carved gargoyle spouts that dumped their runoff down the cliffside toward the poor quarters below.
On the dark wood console before Sorell, a bronze differential needle coupled to the main river-spirit holding vessel quivered and dropped four graduations toward the red datum mark. Junior Adjunct Venn stood two paces behind the Rector’s elbow. He held a damp wax tablet that had just come up the air-powered messenger tube from the town registrar’s clerk.
‘The bleed in Sector Four was not a routine water drops trap, Rector,’ Venn said. His voice was tight as he read the smudged dispatch. ‘Aldermanic Councilor Elna Vesk signed a Section Twelve physical inquest warrant forty minutes ago. Auditor Varo Nenn and that dismissed apprentice, Pella Rook, have taken Examiner Corvin Hest down into the riverward check shaft of Relief Trunk Three. They have already unsealed the outer bronze hatch and tapped the main gallery.’
