At Fallow Spoke, the water climbed.
Iven heard it before he saw the mechanism: a heavy clack, a pour, a long wooden creak and another clack. The river below the station fell through a narrow cut. Beside it, a chain of shallow buckets rose inside a stone shaft, each one tipping its load into a channel above the roofs.
From the approach path it looked as though the river had changed its mind about gravity.
He stopped beside the first railing and grinned.
Neri followed his gaze.
“Yes,” she said. “You may look.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“You were about to abandon your pack in the road.”
