The water did not splash when the golden Returner Seal struck the brine. It parted with a heavy, oily hiss, foaming violently around the engraved perimeter as forty pounds of hydraulic pressure met eighty degrees of core heat.
Jon Hale kept both palms planted flat against the scarred oak table, four inches from the bronze rim. The heat that rolled off the vessel struck his face like the backdraft from an iron-smelting furnace, smelling of ozone, sharp salt, and the scorched zinc alloy of the King’s plate. Through the soles of his boots, the granite bedrock of the Old Hill gave a sudden, shuddering lurch, as if an invisible lever had been thrown forty feet below the cellar floorboards.
“Tobin! Two turns on the brass!” Jon shouted over the roar of the boiling water. “Open the flume!”
Across the chamber, Tobin threw his weight against the iron petcock lever. The valve opened with a groaning shriek of cold metal, and with a deep, hollow thump that rattled the masonry joints, seventy gallons a second of icy river water surged through the lead supply conduit.
The effect was instantaneous.
In the bronze bowl, the boiling foam collapsed into a violent, churning vortex. The fresh river water entered through the bottom nozzle, sweeping across the submerged face of the golden plate in swirling eddies of turquoise and amber light. As the cold water drew the thermal load away from the alloy, a cloud of fine, dense white vapor billowed upward toward the…
