The eastern water chute headwall was a massive castle wall of dark river granite, built four ages earlier to protect the lower wool storehouses from spring ice jams. Now, twenty-eight pounds of pressure of boiling, sulfur-stained water was thundering through its arched relief portal. It sent up clouds of scalding spray that smelled of copper green rust, hot river gravel. The pungent silt stench of old sewage trapped in the riverbed.
Master Galt and three of his senior watermen stood on the upper stone coping, their hands braced against the massive iron lever that controlled the emergency water gate drop. Their heavy canvas coats were soaked through, their whiskers dripping with river grime. The shaking of the churning water beneath the stone was so violent that flecks of dried pipe lime were shaking loose from the archway joints. It fell like gray snow into the roaring torrent.
‘She’s running at sixty percent of full storm volume!’ Galt bellowed across the levee as Pella, Ada, and Eren came sprinting along the embankment. ‘The backing-up pressure from Sorell’s upper drain tube is bleeding right through the relief pipe hub! The old bypass valve is howling like a scalded hound!’
Ada Morland pushed past the watermen. She stepped down onto the wet hemlock staging that hung suspended over the boiling trench. The timbers under her boots were shaking with a high-pitched, metal hum that rattled her teeth. She pulled her ten-inch adjustable wrench from her belt and gently tapped the pipe rim studs…
