The smell of wet stonework and pipe lime dust was thick in the vaulted stone cellars beneath the old town maltings as Eren Tal and Pella Rook walked the boundary of the proposed offering flooding zone. Above their heads, the heavy limestone barrel vaults were supported by massive four-foot square piers of Roman cut stone, crusted with hundreds of years of stone salts and dark river green rust.
Eren held his brass-bound spirit level against the damp wall. Meanwhile, Pella extended Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs to measure the height of the timber threshold above the street cobbles. Down near their boots, shallow puddles of salty water seeped through the flat stone slab joints. They carried the sharp, cold silt stench of the nearby canal.
‘If the backup relief water chute fails during the peak surge, Pella, this entire lower tier of eight storage vaults will fill with five feet of river water in twelve minutes,’ Eren said, his voice echoing under the stone arches. ‘We can’t stop it. The high-pressure slope drops four feet right here at the bend of the canal. If we try to dike this doorway with sandbags, the backing-up pressure will blow out the brick foundations of the apartments across the alley.’
