Because the revised route through the upper museum gallery added seventy-five meters of level distance and broke direct sound line-of-sight to Ada Morland’s valve station at Third Gate, the team couldn’t rely on spoken shouts or hand signals through the storm.
The solution had not come from an academy summoning treatise or a military semaphore manual. It had come from Jo Saye’s alterations workroom in Harrowby. There, she had spent thirty years using overhead spring-balanced cords to control the steam irons and pressing machines suspended above her cutting tables.
In the long hall connecting the museum gallery to the lower weir gates, Dima Fen stood atop an eight-foot wooden stepladder, a small magnetic tack-hammer in his right hand and a mouth full of copper-plated upholstery tacks.
Beside the ladder, young Tavi held the unrolling spool of braided linen cord, his fingers carefully guiding the twine to keep it from kinking in the draft.
Tap-tap-tap.
Dima drove three tacks through the heavy leather tab of a four-inch canvas loop, securing it firmly into the center grain of an ancient oak ceiling floor beam. The loop was made of heavy, four-ply reed canvas dipped in thick tar, its inner outer rim lined with a polished brass eyelet lubricated with sheep fat.
