The outer stone retaining wall of the College Sluice Pumping House rose forty feet above the churning gray foam of the Lowbank ferry boat ramp, its granite blocks slimy with black river moss and crusted with dead river-snails.
Behind the barred iron grates at the base of the wall, the massive oak-and-iron water gate rollers turned with a deep, grinding shudder that shook through the mud underfoot. Four hundred revolutions a minute, powered by the headrace from the High Tor. He pulled river water into the college straining chambers.
Tavi was fourteen feet up the upright stonework, his bare toes jammed into a weathered lime joint. His thin fingers grabbed the rusted iron bracket of a defunct mooring ring.
“Tavi!” Pella called from the stone boat ramp below. Her boots slid half an inch in the wet silt before she caught her balance against a rotting timber bollard. “Get your feet back on the boat ramp. Now.”
The boy didn’t drop down. He twisted his neck. His face was flushed red with hard effort and river wind, his overgrown hair whipping across his forehead. Under his arm, tucked into the bib of his apron, was a piece of charcoal and a folded scrap of butcher’s wrapping paper.
“I can see the channel, Pella!” he yelled down over the roar of the intake rollers. “The big bronze one with the red lead paint on the pipe rim! It doesn’t run toward the Upper Terraces at all! It dog-legs right down into the mud under the ferry landing!”
“I don’t care if it runs to the moon,” Pella shouted back. Her voice tightening with was cold fury. “Come down before your foot slips.”
“I’m almost at the check hatch—”
A wet, sickening crunch of crumbling mortar echoed from the stone face.
A chunk of dried lime mortar the size of a pigeon’s egg popped out from under Tavi’s right big toe. The boy’s body dropped four inches, his hands wildly clawing at the slick, moss-covered granite. His charcoal stub spun through the air, hit the churning water below, and vanished instantly into the intake suction.
His left hand caught the mooring ring. But his shoulder wrenched with a sharp, heard pop. His boots kicked uselessly in the empty air, five feet directly above the churning bronze teeth of the debris-shredder guard.
Pella didn’t think about stances, theoretical magic formulas, or the polite words of the third-year summoning catechism.
She vaulted onto the rotting timber stringer of the old ferry ramp, her cowhide boots finding purchase on the iron spikes of the fender, and lunged upward. Her right hand shot out, her calloused fingers digging deep into the greasy, thick wool collar of Tavi’s smock.
The fabric choked him, but she hauled his body sideways with a violent, whole-body heave that dragged him off the stonework face and slammed his ribs against the heavy oak bumper of the boat ramp.
They both tumbled into the river silt together in a tangle of wet wool, bruised shins, and cold canal mud.
The water gate rollers grunted below them, swallowing a floating pine branch with a violent, splintering crunch that spat toothpicks into the foam.
Tavi lay on his back in the mud, gasping for air, his hand clutched over his wrenched shoulder, tears cutting clean gray tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
“I was... I was getting the pipe route,” he choked out, his voice shaking. “You said... You said Ada needed to know where the headrace branched. You said we needed proof for the slate.”
Pella sat up slowly. Her right knee was throbbing where it had struck an iron spike. Her palms were scraped raw, smeared with river slime and black grit. She took his wrist, rotated it gently, and felt along the collar bone. The collarbone was intact, though the shoulder joint was swollen and hot to the touch.
A cold, hollow realization settled into the pit of her stomach.
She had spent three days complaining about the college masters. How Master Sorell ignored safety limits, how the summoners treated ordinary workers as disposable tools, how the high-born apprentices took reckless risks to win gold medals and public acclaim. And here was Tavi, an ignorant kitchen runner, risking his life to climb an intake wall. That was because he had watched her sneak into the college archives two nights ago to copy an unpermitted drainage chart.
He wasn’t being disobedient. He was imitating her.
“Sit up,” she said. Her voice dropped from a shout to a low, steady command that brooked no argument.
Tavi scrambled up onto his knees, his head hanging, his sleeve wiping his nose.
“Did you break the bone?” she asked, her fingers probing the muscle.
“No,” he mumbled. “Just... Pulled it. In the muscle.”
She took Merrow’s vial of clove oil from her pocket, uncorked it with her teeth. Then she rubbed a measure of the warm, sharp liquid into his neck and shoulder tendon with firm, unrushed circles. The boy winced, but the shivering began to slow.
“You listen to me, Tavi,” Pella said, looking straight into his wide, frightened eyes. “What does Ada do before she touches a valve?”
“She... She checks the solitude points,” the boy whispered.
“Does she climb the boiler casing while the steam is running?”
“No.”
“Does she jump across a pit to show off for Ben?”
“No.”
“She sets her bag down, she checks the pressure gauge. If the line isn’t safe, she refuses to turn the wrench,” Pella said, her grip on his shoulder tightening slightly. “That’s what field skill is. Reckless bravado is for third-year students who have rich fathers to pay the surgeon’s bill. Down here, if you slip into the intake rollers, Merrow doesn’t have a miracle to stitch you back together. You get ground into grease, and the kitchen loses its best fire-tender.”
Tavi sniffled, looking down at his muddy knees. He reached into his wet pocket and pulled out a second scrap of wrapping paper.
“I drew the joint before my foot slipped,” he mumbled. “From the dock stringer. Before I started climbing.”
Pella took the paper. Drawn in blunt charcoal was an accurate layout of the six-inch bronze dog-leg, including the four-bolt pipe rim and the rusted lead balance weight arm.
Pella stared at the drawing for three seconds.
“You drew this from the dock?” she asked.
“Yes. From the second bollard.”
“Then you climbed the wall for nothing,” Pella said, folding the paper carefully. “You already had the measurement from the safe ground. Now take your legs back to the back kitchen, wash your face in the graywater tub, and tell Eren you’re on tally duty for the oak shores. If you leave the back kitchen before noon, I’ll have Merrow put you on grease-trap duty for a month.”
Pella walked to the edge of the ferry boat ramp, her boots sinking two inches into the wet gray clay. She took a five-foot ash sounding rod from the rack beside the ferry gate, dropped the lead-weighted tip into the churning river current. Then she watched the string angle against the timber stringer.
“Current is running four knots on the slack,” she observed, noting the drag on the rod. “The High Tor weirs must be open two notches above the normal autumn schedule. Look at the foam.”
Tavi crept up beside her. His smock now was tucked in properly, his sore shoulder held carefully against his ribs.
“The foam is yellow,” he pointed out, pointing with his good hand. “Usually it’s white or gray from the mountain silt. When it’s yellow, that means the water is coming from the sulfur springs near the copper mines above the gorge.”
“Which means Sorell is drawing from the deep bypass,” Pella said. “The natural river isn’t high enough to feed his drain tube. So he’s pulling from the stone cuts.”
She looked down at Tavi’s feet. His boots were ancient, cracked cowhide with the soles worn down to smooth, greasy leather, fully empty of heel-irons or traction pegs.
“Look at your boots,” she said, tapping the worn leather with her sounding rod. “You tried to climb forty feet of wet granite wearing leather that has less grip than an oiled eel. Who cobbles your shoes?”
“Nobody,” Tavi muttered, digging his toe into the mud. “Old Master Garrow threw them out behind the cooperage when the seams split. I tied the toes with binder twine.”
“The moment we get paid for the Nine Lanterns job,” Pella said, “we take you to Master Cobbler Vane on Fish Street. Two copper bits for new oak soles with hobnails and three iron lace-hooks. You don’t walk on these slipways without iron in your soles. If you slip into the current with smooth leather, the undertow will have you under the intake screens before you can shout for Merrow.”
“Hobnails?” Tavi’s eyes widened with sudden, childish pride. “Real dock nails? Like the draymen wear?”
“Real dock nails,” Pella confirmed. “So you sound like a proper carter when you walk on the flags instead of an urchin sneaking through a back kitchen. Now take this sounding rod back to the tool rack, hang it by the leather loop, and fetch the wooden trolley tray from Eren’s shed.”
“Yes, Pella,” the boy mumbled. He scrambled to his feet. He held his shoulder. Then he scurried up the boat ramp toward the kitchen door like a startled canal rat.
Pella stood alone in the river fog, her scraped hands stinging from the salt air, watching the great bronze rollers turn in the dark.