The departure of Senn from the stonework confines of Lathmere was not marked by a blinding explosion of divine light, nor by a miraculous wave that drowned the docks. It was marked by a huge, deep lightening of the stone itself. A sensation as if the entire limestone foundation of the lower city had let out a breath it had been holding for forty years.
Pella Rook stood on the downstream watching platform. There, the stone retaining wall curved out to meet the lower harbor. Beside her stood Master Garrow and Ada Morland. Ada’s pipe hub gauge rested on a timber bollard, its twin brass dials showing a steady, uninterrupted pressure drop of eight pounds of pressure across the entire lower weir system. The needle didn’t fluctuate. It dropped with the smooth, inexorable care of a falling swinging weight.
Down in the deep water of the river throat, the dark, jade-green mass of the current seemed to stretch, lengthening out like a great ribbon of silk pulled through a ring. For a dozen heartbeats, the Gray Rush moved with an almost supernatural stillness. A glass-smooth torrent that carried no foam, no spray. No debris, gliding over the granite weir apron with the silence of oil on polished bronze.
