The wooden float peg did not slide down the iron collar; it plunged.
In the corner of the Lantern cellar, the eight-foot pine lath dropped through the guide bracket like an iron plumb-bob cut from its cord. The painted red notches—two minutes, one minute, thirty seconds—flashed past the collar in a blurred smear of scarlet, ending with a sharp, heavy thud that echoed through the masonry as the weighted cedar block struck the slimy floor of the empty cistern.
The reservoir was dry.
Four thousand cubic feet of river head had been sucked through the shattered valve into Vannic Dorr’s sub-cellars in less than forty seconds. The lead supply conduit running along the north wall let out a long, wheezing gasp—a hollow, sucking rattle that sounded like a dying mule drawing silt into its windpipe. Behind the iron inspection plate, the dry intake flumes shuddered as the air pockets collapsed, creating a violent hydraulic vacuum that pulled gray mortar dust from every stone joint in the vault.
Jon Hale did not let go of the bronze bowl.
His blistered forearms were locked against the outer rim, the skin peeling in ragged white curls where boiling brine had splashed his wrists. The purple wine water inside the vessel was no longer circulating; it had begun to heave in violent, oily convulsions, its surface sinking as the liquid flashed directly into steam against the red-hot golden Returner Seal resting on the bottom shelf.
