The final test was not a matter of delicate measurements. It was a test of violent, total physical destruction. Eren Tal lifted the heavy twenty-gallon surcharge bucket. A heavy oak firkin containing boiling salt water mixed with heavy mountain gravel, designed to simulate the crushing water-flow load of a fourteen-foot river crest.
‘Stand back from the lower frame stand!’ Eren roared to the crowd. ‘Laundresses, brace your props! If this sleeve lets go, it will throw hot salt water twenty feet across the flags!’
The forty laundresses dug the iron-shod tips of their clothes-props into the cobblestone seams, leaning their full weight against the timber barrier. Behind them, the lightermen locked their arms together. They formed a human retaining wall that shielded the women and children standing in the rear ranks.
Pella Rook stepped back to the safety line, her eyes fixed upon the heavy leather sleeve that coupled the cedar water chute to the foundation box. The sleeve was made of three-ply oxhide, double-stitched with waxed hemp and clamped with two heavy bronze bands. An exact scale replica of the flexible spreading collar that Sorell had installed around the bedrock anchor at Arch Seven.
Korr Var checked his pocket watch, his voice sharp as an artillery order. ‘Surcharge bucket primed! Sixty seconds to peak flood head! Eren... Dump the surge!’
