The roar of the mill race rose through the soles of Jon’s boots long before he reached the lower sluice.
Below the great north intake, where the swollen river split into the industrial flumes of Harth, the water churned gray and frothy with autumn sediment. Flood Month had turned the Low Sike from a sluggish brown channel into a violent torrent that slammed against the massive granite cutwaters with hydraulic fury. Spray drifted upward in cold, persistent sheets, coating the riverside alder bushes in glistening river slime.
Master mason Alden Bram was sitting on a squared baulk of cured oak near the intake apron. His massive shoulders were hunched against the river wind, his thick woolen smock dusted with yellow stone-grit and iron shavings. Between his heavy boots rested an iron wheel hub from the secondary grain mill, black with old tallow and red with flaking rust. He held a curved steel scraper in his right hand, peeling the corrosion away in long, rhythmic strokes that hissed beneath the thunder of the falling water. An unlit clay pipe was clamped between his rear teeth, its stem bitten down to the yellow clay.
Jon walked along the wet gravel path until his shadow fell across the iron hub. He did not call out a greeting. In a town where water ran at six cubits a second, men did not waste breath shouting against the river.
