Dawn broke over Lathmere not with gold, but with a sullen, bruised pewter light that seeped through the cracks in the washroom shutters. The rain had settled into a steady, soaking downpour, washing the white pipe lime dust from the boat ramp and filling the air with the damp reek of river mud and old wet stonework.
Senior Surveyor Korr Var stood at the long workbench, his glasses perched low on his nose as he examined Pella’s freshly drawn diagrams. The sketches were rendered with sharp, indelible strokes of dark oak-ink on heavy drafting thick parchment, showing the three channels of the Great Sluice as an integrated living organism.
“A lung,” Korr murmured, his blunt fingernail tracing the line of the center channel labeled Third Gate. “For sixty years, every academy summoner in the High Terrace has treated this channel as an emergency overflow—a waste pipe to be bolted shut to prevent river spirit essence from leaking out of their collection array.”
“Because they don’t understand fluid mechanics,” Eren Tal said. He set down an eight-inch steel wrench with a ringing clatter. He took a bite of a warm sourdough crust roll, chewing with the deliberate slowness of a man who had been up all night squaring timber joints. “They think water is like sand in a sack: if you pour it in a box and put a heavy enough lid on it, it will stay quiet. But water has to carry air, Korr. When river water tumbles through a…
