Pella leaned over the speaking tube, speaking with complete, plain honesty into the copper wire. “Senn, you must know our limits before you move. Sleeve Beta at the basin is carrying seventy-one pounds of pressure. It can’t take more than seventy-five without tearing. Our clockwork signal cord was cut by a falling roof stone. So our messengers are running through the upper arcade on foot. We can’t move at the speed of a mountain gale. We can only move at the speed of men carrying timber.”
An academy master would have died before confessing a weakened sleeve to a captive spirit, fearing that the entity would seize upon the weakness to destroy its masters. But Senn was not a slave looking for a master’s throat. Senn was the river itself, and water always seeks the path of least pushback.
“I HEAR THE LIMITS,” the voice whispered back through the copper. “I WILL NOT SURGE AT SEVENTY-FIVE... I WILL ROLL AT SIXTY-FIVE... LET THE ASH PLANKS HOLD... LET THE SEAMS SING GENTLY.” Across the basin, Ada’s liquid silver needle dropped three marks, settling on sixty-four pounds. The river was modulating its own power to fit the cloth that held it.
At minute 59 and 49 seconds on the Courtesy Arch clockwork dial, with 31 minutes left before forced recall, cold mountain runoff carrying broken baked-clay pipe-rings swirled against the flagged wharf margin. It sent a steady pulse through the flags across the brass speaking-tube mouthpiece. She stood beside the pella rook…
