While the patch was being stitched, Jo Saye conducted a nonstop, unannounced safety drill with the twelve local tradesmen who would handle the valves during the final flood operation.
The men were hauling on a heavy timber cross-beam. Then, sweating and shouting in rhythm, Jo suddenly blew three sharp, piercing blasts on her brass whistle. Without a single word of pause, without looking around to see if a foreman was watching, all twelve men instantly froze in place. They locked their feet and held the load motionless.
Young Kel Dorr, whose instincts had been forged under the whip of academy overseers, dropped his hands from the lever. Then he stepped back onto the rubber matting without a second thought.
Jo walked the line, inspecting their positions, her face breaking into a wide, warm smile. ‘Zero latency,’ Jo announced, checking her pocket stopwatch. ‘Four-tenths of a second from the whistle to total freeze. That is skilled work, lads. In Harrowby, we have steel mills where men with thirty years of experience can’t stop that clean.’
‘In Lowbank, Mistress Jo,’ Kel Dorr said. She wiped the sweat from his eyes, ‘we learned forty-eight hours ago that a man who doesn’t stop for a whistle ends up with his legs crushed under an oak wheel. We don’t need an academy master to tell us to keep our bones whole.’
