Down inside the masonry valve chamber beneath the eastern abutment of the North Weir, the air tasted of cold river slime, hot tallow grease, and the sharp metallic tang of scalding steam rising up the vertical granite intake shaft from the Crown Furnace far below.
Jon Hale stood on the narrow iron grating beside the rack-and-pinion winch, holding a hooded horn lantern high in his left hand so its yellow beam illuminated both the cast-iron gear teeth of the four-ton by-wash gate and the vertical brass float-gauge bolted to the wet ashlar wall of the cistern shaft.
On the graduated brass plate of the gauge, the copper counterweight-pointer—suspended by a braided phosphor-bronze wire from the hollow copper float riding on the subterranean cooling reservoir—rested squarely on the deeply chiseled numeral 7. Two inches below that notch, at the numeral 5, Master Mason Alden Bram had drawn a thick, unmistakable horizontal bar with a stick of red raddle-chalk and scratched a chisel-cut straight across the brass so that even if steam fogged the lantern glass, a man’s thumb could feel the stop-line in the dark.
“Ten seconds to the fifth bell,” Sister Oda said from the stone ledge beside the gauge.
