Between three and five in the morning, the Roman vault beneath the Ferry Museum ceased to be a quiet town cellar and became an active deep-rock fire.
At three bells past midnight, the surrounding air had reached eighty-four degrees. By four bells, the red alcohol column in Korr Var’s wall heat gauge stood at eighty-eight point four.
Upstream at the High Sluice Crown, Chancellor Sorell’s night engineers had taken the total step of dropping the heavy oak water gate-timbers on all three main bypass canals, attempting to force thirty thousand tons of river water into the high-pressure turbine water chutes before the morning milling shift began.
The diverted water, blocked by the silt-choked upper screens, had nowhere to go. It hammered against the underground dark rock doorstep beneath the Citadel, forcing white-hot stone water through the deep ground-shaking fault fissures that ran directly under Lowbank.
Pella sat on an upturned timber baulk beside Hal Rook’s cedar model table, her arms wrapped around her knees. She shivered wildly despite the stifling heat.
CRACK!
The sound was as sharp and violent as a pistol shot in an enclosed room.
Ten feet above Pella’s head, a jagged, saucer-sized slab of Roman limestone snapped away from the haunch of the barrel vault, tumbling through the air to smash onto the granite floor flags with an explosion of white powder and flying stone splinters. A fragment the size of a walnut struck Pella’s heavy leather boot. That left a gray bruise on the cowhide.
