At two o’clock in the morning, the courtyard of the Old Ferry warehouse was lit up by the steady, unblinking white glare of two acetylene hardened carbon-iron lamps borrowed from the Sea-court survey boat. The midnight rain had settled into a fine, freezing mist that drifted off the swollen river and coated the white cedar timbers of the filter chest with shimmering beads of moisture.
Pella Rook stood on a wooden mounting block beside the cast-iron blower casing, her cold fingers resting on the wrought-iron release dog of the gravity drive. Suspended from the ten-foot ash gallows-frame overhead hung the two-hundred-pound iron ballast weight, coupled to the grooved winding drum of the blower gear-train by a half-inch tarred hemp cable that smelled of Stockholm pine tar.
‘All observers to your marks,’ Senior Surveyor Korr Var called out from the shelter of the back kitchen doorway. He held his silver Sea-court pocket watch open under the hardened carbon-iron beam. Meanwhile, Corvin Hest stood beside him with the witness ledger and an inkhorn of dark oak-ink. Down by the cellar ventilator grating, Eren Tal knelt on the wet flat stone slabs with a lit animal fat candle in his hand. He watched the steady yellow flame to verify that no outside courtyard air was leaking past the oakum-packed collar of the linseed-canvas suction sleeve.
