The inside of the High Terrace compound was unlike anything Pella had ever imagined. It was a huge circular pavilion of dressed granite, open to the sky through an eighty-foot central light-well, dominated by the massive bronze casing of the Sluice Crown. The rig was huge. A circular temple of cast bell-bronze forty feet high, covered in fine, detailed sharp-angled lattices. It was surrounded by eight massive intake water chutes that disappeared into the bedrock below.
The air in the courtyard hit them like a wall of hot, damp wool. It was thirty-two degrees—twenty degrees warmer than the rainy street outside. The granite flat stone slabs around the base of the machine were sweating hot water. The mortar joints between the stones were weeping ribbons of white, bitter-salt foam that smelled foully of boiled copper and stale river slime.
Master Davin Sorell stood on the raised command terrace. He was surrounded by six senior summoners in scarlet robes. He held an ivory-tipped sounding rod, his face an unreadable mask of high-born disdain. He watched the town guards establish an outer edge around his control consoles.
‘Inspector Korr Var,’ Sorell said, his voice cold as mountain granite. ‘You have forced your way into the outer ring. What further indignity do you intend to inflict upon the sacred instruments of the city?’
