Between seven and nine bells on the eighteenth night, while a cold northern wind rattled the slate roofs of Lowbank. Then it carried the first damp smell of highland snow-melt down the gorge, the workshop crew stepped out into the cobbled yard behind Sister Merrow’s kitchen to prepare the eighteen-foot tabletop water chute for the coming council test. Four horn lanterns hung from Eren Tal’s timber shears cast steady amber pools across the seasoned white-cedar trough, the bevelled glass viewing panes. The three tiny bronze water gate gates Korr Var had machined to a one-to-forty scale from Hal Rook’s pre-flood drawings.
Earlier in the week, they had designed the scale model simply to show how sealing the Third Gate throat caused static backing-up pressure under Fish Street. Now, armed with Kel Dorr’s tracing of Schedule C-9 and Judge Corvin Hest’s sworn testimony, Korr Var and Pella added a crucial clockwork modification to the central weir chamber of the model.
“Hold the spirit-lamp steady by the middle pier, Tavi,” Korr Var instructed. He knelt on a dry kneeling-mat beside Eren Tal while fitting a slender quarter-inch copper tiny blood vessel tube through the tiny bronze crown above Gate Two. “We’re connecting this upper bleed-drain tube to a spring-loaded cam-ratchet over the main gate spindle. Every time I draw an ounce of dyed blue water out of the regulating pool through this tiny blood vessel—simulating Master Sorell’s ringing memory skim—the ratchet tightens the gate spring by one notch and dumps the bled…
