At six in the evening on the twenty-first day, Master Davin Sorell realized that the ground was collapsing beneath his boots. The arrival of town land-mappers in the quarry, the quiet defection of Varo Nenn and Corvin, and the steely silence of Councilor Vesk had telegraphed the certain outcome of the joint review.
Alone in the central control chamber of the Sluice Crown, surrounded by eight senior summoners whose faces were pale with anxiety, Sorell made his desperate, reckless gamble.
‘They wish to judge our machine by the standards of ditch-diggers,’ Sorell snarled, his voice echoing in the hot bronze vault. ‘They think they can bind the College of Summoners with sheepskin warrants and iron measuring tongs. We will show them the true majesty of the Third Circle before dawn!’
He reached for the master brass wheel that controlled the main intake vanes on the Upper Tor pool. Disregarding the Council’s reduction order, disregarding the wedged bypass on Gate Three, Sorell wrenched the wheel three full rotations to the left, opening the intake to eighty-five percent of maximum flood head.
Forty thousand tons of roaring highland water surged into the bronze pipe hubs. In the deep bedrock vault below, the holding lattice groaned. A terrible, shrieking sound deep ring that made the brass floorboards shudder. The heat gauge on the central column jumped from forty-four degrees to forty-six in thirty seconds, venting plumes of scalding, rotten-egg steam that hissed through the bronze spreading joints.
