Before stepping out onto the wet street, Varo Nenn laid the financial balance sheet on the table before Councilor Vesk and Pella Rook. The arithmetic of their survival was razor-thin.
‘This ninety-minute rehearsal consumes nine silver coins from our banked locked deposit,’ Nenn reported, his finger tracing the clean ink columns. ‘That leaves us with exactly nine silver coins in the active reserve. Enough for one, and only one, final ninety-minute deployment when the true mountain crest strikes the city on Day Twenty-Five.’
‘And if we need a third deployment?’ Councilor Vesk asked, her brow furrowed.
‘There is no third deployment, Councilman,’ Pella answered quietly. ‘Unless the merchant syndicates deposit forty crowns of gold in the town treasury, the Courtesy Bridge will lock its doors when that ninth silver coin is spent. We can’t afford an error today. This rehearsal must find every flaw in our plumbing, because when we go into that vault tomorrow night, there will be no second chances.’
Inside Lowbank Courtesy Workshop & Water chute, the air carried the sharp, clear odor of wet Portland cement, river silt, and crushed iron melted rock waste, showed by icy spray thrown upward from the underwater intake aprons. With animal fat dips guttering inside their punched holes in tin wind-cages, Pella Rook scored a crisp datum line across the limestone block with the hardened steel scriber and spread the working notes for ‘The Reserve Cost Accounting’ across the heavy slate leveling table anchored to the cellar floor. Every measurement…
