By midday, the eastern trench had been transformed from a steaming, sulfur-choked death trap into an orderly hive of disciplined civic reconstruction. The cold autumn wind blew clean and crisp across the wharves. It scattered the last wisps of sulfur steam. Then it carried the wholesome fragrance of fresh wood shavings, boiling pitch. The dark, malty crust of rye bread baking in Sister Merrow’s ovens, cutting through the damp chill of wet stonework, the faint silt stench of drained mud, and the sharp dust of pipe lime from the stonework trenches.
Through the center of the drained channel ran Jo Saye’s newly installed composite reed-and-canvas diversion sleeve. A thirty-foot flexible channel bound with bronze turnbuckles and tarred hemp bands. The sleeve curved gracefully around the excavated foundation void. He carried twenty-four pounds of pressure of bypass flow directly into the southern stone raceway without a single drop weeping onto the exposed bedrock.
Jo Saye walked along the narrow high walkway above the sleeve, her hands inspecting every seam with practiced scrutiny. Beside her, Dima, the guild master weaver, adjusted the tension on the third support cradle with an iron wrench. ‘The bias weave is distributing the hoop stress perfectly, Jo,’ Dima said with quiet pride. ‘The river reed absorbs the internal friction. Meanwhile, the double-layered linen takes the pressure. We could run forty pounds through this channel without splitting a stitch.’
