At six o’clock on the morning of the twenty-first day, the great bronze warning bells of Lathmere began to toll across the misty river. It wasn’t a drill. The sound signal line strung from St. Jude’s tower was shaking wildly in the gale. Two miles upstream, the river had crested the Upper Tor doorstep. It sent a huge brown surge of glacier runoff and crushed limestone powder roaring toward the city.
In Sister Merrow’s washroom, sixty men and women of the Lowbank Maintenance Committee stood in silent, orderly ranks. They were soaked with rain, their clothes stained with clay and grease, but their faces were fully calm. Every man held his tool—an adze, an iron wrench, a coil of greased hemp, or a shovel—ready to move to his assigned sector.
At the head of the room stood Pella Rook, wearing Hal Rook’s heavy leather tool belt. His brass measuring tongs shone in the indigo light of the Courtesy Arch. Beside her, Senior Inspector Korr Var held the signed Council warrant in an iron-capped tin tube. His gray coat buttoned was tight, his iron-tipped staff resting on the floor.
Above the arch, the indigo portal hummed with ninety minutes of banked, checked reserve. The three specialists in Harrowby were on standby. It waited for the signal to cross when the check team reached the inner vault.
