The flat-bottomed skiff rocked in the eddy behind Pier Three of the Lowbank retaining wall. The air down here was thick with harbor mist. It smelled of damp limestone, rotting cabbage leaves. The oily film that drifted from the cart hauling docks.
Eren Tal sat on the center thwart, his thick woolen sleeves rolled up past his forearms despite the eight-degree chill. In his calloused hands he held a wooden spool wound with braided hemp sounding line, its lower end weighted by a twelve-pound narrowed lead sinker with a deep, circular cup hollowed into its base.
“Packed the cup with fresh sheep fat and powdered lampblack,” Eren grunted. He held up the greasy gray paste in the base of the lead for Councilor Vesk to see. “If the bottom is clean river gravel, it comes up speckled with white quartz sand. If Sorell’s intake is leaking slurry through the fault lines, we’ll know it in ten seconds.”
Pella held the stern steering oar steady against the mossy cutwater of the pier. That kept the light skiff from drifting into the boil of the lower weir. “Drop the lead, Eren. Right along the footing seam where the stonework meets the riverbed.”
