An hour after the grand test on the High Terrace, Pella Rook and Korr Var returned to the damp, quiet back kitchen of Sister Merrow’s kitchen in Lowbank. Down here, the cold river mist was drifting through the doorway. It carried the wholesome smell of baking sourdough crust and the sharp, clean bite of pipe lime dust from the floorboards.
Pella laid Hal Rook’s master river survey across the pine table, weighting the corners with an iron line weight and Ada Morland’s ten-inch adjustable wrench. Beside the map lay the tracking data slips brought by runner from the four lower basin stations, each covered in hurried columns of dark oak-ink.
Eren Tal was already at the table, his brass try-square in his hand and a mug of steaming boiled tea at his elbow. ‘The watermen on the lower locks are screaming, Pella,’ Eren said, looking up from his counts. ‘The water level at the harbor cutwater dropped twenty-two inches between ten and eleven o’clock. The coal barges in the lower basin are sitting on the riverbed mud. Where did forty thousand cubic feet of water go?’
Pella dipped her pen, drawing a bold red line across the river profile. ‘Sorell claims the Hollow Crown etherealized the flow. But look at the mass balance equations Ada gave us. If you evaporated thirty thousand cubic feet of water per second, the steam cloud would have boiled every seagull out of the sky for five miles around. There was no steam. The air…
