Alden Bram cleared a three-foot space on the central ash table, sweeping aside cold tea bowls, clay pipes, and ink-stained quills with the rough back of his leather sleeve. From the scarred calfskin drafting tube slung across his shoulder, the master mason withdrew a broad roll of stiff, oil-varnished sheepskin that crackled like dry birch bark as he forced it flat against the timber. It was an intricate hydraulic elevation of Harth’s municipal river works, drawn thirty winters ago by royal ditch-reeves and heavily annotated in Bram’s own blunt, angular lettering with ink mixed from lamp soot and walnut oil.
Four heavy forged trench-spikes, brought straight from Garrick Holt’s smithy with the slag still crusting their flanges, clunked onto the four corners of the sheepskin to hold the curling parchment against the rough ash boards.
“Look here,” Bram rumbled, leaning both palms upon the table edge, his ash cane propped against his knee while the peat smoke from the brazier curled around his graying beard. “This is the weir. Six hundred paces above the town bridge, where the river divides around the gravel island. The masonry breastwork stands nine feet high, holding back seven feet of head when the autumn rains come off the northern peaks. Here in the center are the twin sluice gates—forty tons of cured greenheart timber and iron strapping, hung from a heavy ash gantry on two forged iron winch chains.”
