The third phase of the afternoon drill was designed for the hardest student in the workshop: Pella Rook herself. Eren Tal had cleared the center of the flat stone slabs and set up a cast-iron pipe rim bolted to a three-foot length of heavy lead pipe. The lead was soft, scored with grease pencils. Then he threaded with an old iron coupling that had to be packed with tow and red-lead putty. A pot of boiled tea sat on the hearth. Its steam mixed with the faint smell of sourdough crust and linseed oil.
Pella knelt by the pipe, wearing Ada’s medium canvas work apron and holding a twelve-inch screw wrench. Her left arm was fitted with the new scarlet wrist-tab. Behind her in the yellow observer circle stood Eren Tal. He held the lead clapper of the stop-bell. Outside the high garden window, the river breeze carried the familiar, damp silt stench of the mudflats and the dull clank of harbor dredges.
“Your assignment is simple, Pella,” Eren said, his voice flat and detached. “You’re tightening the four pipe rim bolts in cross-pattern to seat the lead seal ring. You need three complete turns on each nut to achieve a seal. But whenever that bell strikes, you stop. You don’t finish the turn. You don’t test the thread. You drop your wrench and you take two paces back into the green circle. Let’s see if five years of academy training can learn to surrender control.”
