Pella knelt beside the burst collar, her fingers tracing the pulled threads. In her pocket, the Courtesy Bridge slate hummed with faint blue leftover energy from the Harrowby threshold.
‘What if we brush the collar with echo energy from the arch?’ Pella suggested, looking up at Jo. ‘The deep ring could temper the resin. That made the collar as hard as cast bronze so it can’t pull from the clamp.’
Jo looked at her, her dark eyes sharp and fully unbending. ‘No, Pella. Absolutely not.’
‘Why not?’ Pella asked, her frustration rising. ‘The arch can preserve an entire human body during transit. Why not reinforce a two-inch collar of canvas?’
‘Because water doesn’t negotiate with magic, Pella,’ Jo answered. Her voice dropped into the quiet power of a heavy-duty rigger. ‘If you use echo energy to turn that collar into iron, the stress doesn’t vanish. The physical load of forty thousand tons of water is still there. All you do is move the failure point two inches down the sleeve into the softer unreinforced cloth. And instead of a slow, visible tear that a worker can spot and patch, you get an explosive brittle blowout that takes a worker’s arm off.’
