Two mornings after the duel, a brown wave climbed over the spillway’s inspection step.
Iven saw it from the road above the yard. The stone on which he and Yara had fought remained dry. Beyond the separate control barrier, the keeper was already raising the alarm board while water pressed through a place that should have held only spray.
The contest had a winner. This was a different problem.
He ran to the working gate and waited for the keeper to open it instead of climbing into unfamiliar controls.
“Upper feeder blocked,” she said. “Rockfall above the throat. The main gate moves, but the branch is filling faster than it can clear.”
Her name was Bera Orn. She had kept this spillway through six wet seasons and knew the difference between a stubborn wheel and a demand the channel could no longer carry.
“What can we close upstream?”
“Small head gate. The return behind it still comes over. If we shut everything here, it backs into the upper stores.”
