By a quarter past six on the evening of the twenty-seventh day—nearly four hours after Ada Morland, Jo Saye, and Imran Bell had stepped safely back through their thirty-second return ovals into Yorkshire at the close of their ninety-minute overtime deployment—low autumn twilight settled over the wet roofs and roaring channels of Lathmere. Inside the Turning Basin staging shed, the brass Courtesy Arch stood dark, cool, and dormant upon its ash sleepers, its reserve pointer resting at nine point four percent beneath a locked protective cover.
No cross-world help remained on call, and none was needed. Outside in the rain-washed dusk, the second, broader shoulder of the highland snow-melt crest—the heavy evening tail-water from the Silt Reach and the upper High Tor meadows—was rolling down the limestone gorge toward the city.
Pella Rook stood on the wet granite coping of the Central Weir watching bridge in her mud-spattered bottle-green wool tunic and reed-cloth oilskin coat, her bruised left shoulder strapped beneath her collar and her father’s brass measuring tongs tucked in her apron pocket. Beside her stood Foreman Eren Tal. It held a shuttered bull’s-eye lantern and the master tally-slate for the three manual gate stations.
Below their boots, the difference between Master Davin Sorell’s autocratic engine of five hours ago and the city’s restored three-gate network was visible in every square yard of moving water. Where the river had boiled in a single, choking, white-frothed cooking pot against a bricked wall at noon, the dark evening flood now divided…
