The men coming through the reeds carried their weapons above their heads.
For a moment Iven thought they were asking to cross. Then the first man lowered a hooked gun onto the bank and fired through the red boundary cloth.
The shot cut a strip from the shelter’s doorpost. Eshra Daal fell sideways behind a water barrel, still holding the morning’s measuring cup. Across the channel, a winch began to turn.
Its cable rose out of the water.
“They’ve put a line under the recorder,” Neri said.
Iven was already moving.
The flow recorder stood on a low stone pier twenty paces downstream, outside the nursery boundary but inside the Custodians’ surveyed working cut. Its brass float arm had given them three days of useful readings. More immediately, its footing formed part of the bank that kept the cut out of the houses behind Sedge Ladder.
The contractors were pulling the whole footing loose.
