The seep appeared after the evening meal.
At first it was a dark line beneath the older return basin, a little water where the wall should have stayed dry. The night keeper marked its edge with chalk and checked the basin head.
By the next reading, the wet line had crossed the chalk.
She called Neri.
The basin stood outside the newly fitted bank. Its stone wall belonged to an older arrangement, carrying water through a settling turn before the onward line accepted it. The wall had survived many seasons. That did not make the moving water beneath its foot an ordinary harmless thing.
Neri arrived with the local surveyor and two masons.
She did not put a hand against it first.
She watched the water.
