At three in the morning, the city of Lathmere was as dead as a stone quarry. The wind had died, the tide was at dead slack water in the estuary. The background hum of the great river dropped to a muted, glassy whisper. In the silent washroom behind the kitchen, the sound deep ring in the lead basin reached peak clarity. The water resting in the bottom of the trap was fully motionless, acting as a liquid chest muscle that focused the shakes into the air of the room.
Pella knelt directly before the basin, her knees resting on an unraveled wool blanket. She didn’t need the steel rod now. The sound was heard in the open air. A thin, reedy, sibilant whisper that rose from the curved lead pipe like steam rising from a kettle. It sounded like an old lockkeeper speaking through thirty feet of water, his voice frayed by decades of current, but carrying a clear urgent rhythm.
She brought her ear within three inches of the opening, holding her breath until her lungs burned. The hexameter rhythm of three long pulses and three short taps dissolved into clear phonemes, carried on the sound shock waves: ‘...Leave... The... Third... Gate... Breathing...’
