The Old Ferry warehouse was cavernous and cold in the late evening, lit up by six hanging kerosene lanterns that cast long, golden arcs of light across the timber rafters. In the center of the thirty-foot cleared floor, the complete tabletop high-pressure test rig stood on its heavy oak sawhorses. It looked like the skeleton of a great cedar ship resting in dry dock. The air smelled of cedar shavings, pitch pine, animal fat, and the sharp sulfur tang of pipe lime drifting from the river boat ramp.
Eren Tal knelt beneath the central water chute, a wooden mallet in his hand. He drove the final oak locking wedge into the support blade collar. Beside him on a tool chest sat a clay pot of boiled tea and a half-eaten sourdough crust, left over from supper. His flannel sleeves were rolled past his elbows, exposing forearms smudged with charcoal and graphite grease.
“Blade collar locked, Korr,” Eren called out, tapping the wedge with a sharp crack. “The cedar water chute carries two hundred pounds of water with less than a thirty-second of an inch of bending. The joints are payed with sheep fat and boiled resin. Not a drop will cry through the seams.”
