When Pella Rook, Korr Var, Kel Dorr, and Foreman Eren Tal returned down the wet hill to Sister Merrow’s kitchen washroom at six bells that evening, the celebratory relief of securing Councilor Vesk’s emergency hearing order lasted less than five minutes. Once the oilskin wraps were taken off the charts and the crew gathered around the scrubbed pine bread table with mugs of hot chicory tea, the deeper clockwork implication of Schedule C-9 stared up at them from the wood.
Master Tailor Dima Fen, who had walked up from Number 19 Fish Street with two newly stitched reed-cloth valve sleeves over his arm, listened in sober silence as Pella and Kel explained how the Hollow Crown had burned up sixty-eight percent of Senn’s water-system memories.
“Then the answer is simple enough, isn’t it?” thirteen-year-old Tavi said from his stool beside the dormant Courtesy Arch, his brow furrowing as he looked at Kel Dorr. “Once Korr Var and Councilor Vesk force the College to open the vault doors, you and Judge Corvin take a cold chisel, smash Master Sorell’s bronze witness-tubes off the stone pier, and set the river spirit free!”
“If we simply smash the witness-tubes and sever the binding rings while the river channels below are still choked and the third gate is bricked shut, Tavi, we’ll drown Lowbank in twenty minutes,” Pella said quietly, picking up two wooden water buckets and setting them on the table beside Korr Var’s map of the district.
