While Korr Var surveyed the mud in the quarry, Pella Rook stood by the Courtesy Arch in Sister Merrow’s washroom. There, Ada Morland was feeding high-pressure counts across the space-folding link from Harrowby.
The green display on Pella’s message slate was updating with clean, steady care. Ada had analyzed the balance weight specifications and gate lever dimensions from Sorell’s blueprints, comparing them with the bursting strength of Lathmere’s town pipework.
Ada’s voice came through the audio horn, clipped, sharp, and bristling with skilled disgust. ‘Pella, look at the trip threshold on that bronze balance weight. Sorell set the bypass trip spring at one hundred and forty pounds of pressure.’
‘What is the burst strength of our lower baked-clay trunk?’ Pella asked, her pencil poised over her notebook.
‘Eighty-five pounds,’ Ada answered right away. ‘Your town sewers and baked-clay feeder pipes will blow apart like dry clay pots at eighty-five PSI. That means the pressure inside the system will shatter every pipe, blow every cellar floor, and drown the Lower Wards forty-two seconds before the bypass gate even begins to lift from its doorstep.’
Pella stared at the numbers. ‘It was never designed to relieve town backing-up pressure at all.’
‘Not for a second,’ Ada confirmed, the sound of her pencil tapping the desk in Harrowby echoing through the horn. ‘The bypass was designed to protect the Sluice Crown’s internal bronze turbines from over-speeding. It sacrifices the town pipe network to save the machine’s internal gears. It’s a rig designed to…
