Will Carver seized the lanyard of the heavy brass clapper bell mounted on the museum low roof wall. It struck five rapid, heavy blows that echoed off the wet limestone walls. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG! He waited, his ear strained against the storm. He watched for Bessa Marr’s answering signal flag across the courtyard.
No flag moved. On the Third Gate platform, eighty feet away, the ear-splitting roar of thirty thousand gallons of water plunging over the weir apron was so overwhelming that the sound of the brass bell was swallowed fully, lost in the sound vortex of the canyon like a whisper in a fire.
“They can’t hear it!” Will shouted, turning back into the room with despair in his young eyes. “The river is too loud! The wind is blowing straight up the gorge and carrying the chime toward the High Terraces!”
“Then the bells are useless,” Inspector Korr Var said, snapping his dispatch pouch shut. “This is why Hal Rook never relied on a single signal. When the sky screams, iron bells go deaf. We need a runner on the ground. We need an eye that can walk.”
Beneath the low northern clouds at minute 47 and 17 seconds on the Courtesy Arch clockwork dial, with 43 minutes left before forced recall, cold mountain runoff carrying crumbled brickbats swirled against the dry-laid dark rock coping. It sent a cold breath of glacier water across the torn red ribbon. Right at the heart of Museum Brass Clapper Bell, Inspector Korr Var…
