Olan brought the guide and a second lamp. He did not bring an apology, which Iven had not asked for and would not have known what to do with.
The guide was a broad-shouldered woman named Arda. She had worked at the Sixth Lift after the pump failure, when the damaged room was closed and the surviving equipment removed. She carried a key ring, a short iron bar, and a folded plan of the lower levels.
“We go into the outer room,” she said. “The inner wall is still supported by temporary timber. If it shifts, we leave. No one opens the pump pit.”
“Is there water in it?” Iven asked.
“Some. The drain runs, but not as fast as it should.”
“Has anyone checked it since the turn?”
“I checked the outer room yesterday. The inner supports haven’t moved beyond their marks.”
Olan held out the second lamp. Iven took it. The metal was cool, the wick trimmed, the glass clean. He would have preferred the lamp to be faulty. A faulty lamp would have given him something to discuss that was not the reason they were here.
They descended by a service stair beside the lift shaft. The air cooled as they went down. The walls were painted a pale color that had darkened around the lower joints. At the first landing, a fresh support beam crossed the ceiling. At the second, the paint gave way to bare brick marked by water.
Arda unlocked the outer door. It opened inward with a scrape.
The room was smaller than Iven remembered. The empty space where the pump had stood made it seem both larger and less useful: a square of worn floor, four mounting points, and a line of pipes cut and capped at the wall. The ceiling above the former pump was new timber. The old ceiling had fallen with the pressure burst.
A workbench remained against the far wall. Its surface had been cleaned, but a dark mark ran across it where something hot or corrosive had spilled. Iven had stood at that bench with the pressure sheet in his hand. He remembered the number, the ink, and Olan saying the gauge had been unreliable.
He also remembered looking at the clock.
The crew had been behind schedule. A delay would have meant another inspection and an argument with the office that controlled the shift. Iven had wanted the job finished. Olan had given him a reason to sign, and he had taken it.
Arda watched him. “Do you need a moment?”
“No.”
“You can have one anyway.”
He set the lamp on the bench and looked at the capped pipes. “Which parts were recovered?”
“The gauge, the lower valve, and a section of the return line. The pump housing broke into pieces.”
“Who removed them?”
“Investigation crew. I was assigned after.”
Olan opened his folder. “The recovery list says the gauge was transferred to central storage. The later inventory says it was destroyed with the assembly.”
“Who wrote the later line?”
“A clerk named Tarven. He retired last year.”
“Can we ask him?”
“I’ve sent a message.”
Iven examined the mounting points. One bolt remained in the floor, bent toward the door. Another had sheared at the base. The direction of the damage matched an outward force from the pump housing, but he could not reconstruct the whole failure from two bolts.
The capped return line sat higher than he remembered. He checked the old plan against the wall. The plan showed a valve between the pump and the return pipe. The piece Olan had found in storage was a different model from the one named on the sheet.
“Could the plan have been changed?” he asked.
“Yes,” Olan said. “There was a revision during installation.”
“Did I see it?”
“You saw the work order.”
“Did the work order name the valve?”
Olan turned a page. “It named the assembly. The valve detail was in the supplier’s note.”
“Which I didn’t see.”
“I don’t know whether you did.”
Iven looked at him. “You brought me the approval sheet. I remember that. You said the gauge was wrong and the pressure was within the safe range.”
“I remember telling you the gauge had given inconsistent readings.”
“Did you have another reading?”
“Yes.” Olan took a folded slip from the folder. “This was from the test line.”
The slip gave a lower pressure than the gauge Iven had read. It carried a time, a worker’s initials, and a note that the test had been conducted with the return valve partly open. Iven read the note twice.
“Partly open?”
“During the test.”
“The pump was approved for a closed return.”
“The valve was meant to open automatically above the threshold.”
“Did it?”
Olan did not answer immediately. Arda moved to the inner doorway and checked the support marks, giving them the space without leaving the room.
“The investigation couldn’t establish that,” Olan said.
“You showed me this reading?”
“I showed you the number.”
“Did you show me the note?”
“I don’t remember.”
Iven put the slip on the bench. “I didn’t ask how the reading had been taken.”
“No.”
“And you didn’t tell me it was taken with the valve open.”
“I may have. I can’t honestly say.”
There it was: the answer that refused to become a clean weapon. Olan might have concealed the condition. He might have believed it irrelevant. Iven’s memory had sharp edges around some details and a blank where the note belonged. He could not fill that blank with whatever made him least responsible.
Arda came back from the doorway with a short length of timber in her hand. One end had been marked with the initials of a worker from the old crew. Iven recognized them from the brass plate outside.
“Was this his?” he asked.
“It was found behind the workbench. We kept it because it showed where the original support sat.”
“Has his family seen it?”
“I don’t know. The investigation team catalogued it as material, not a possession.”
Olan took the timber and turned it in his hands. A shallow notch had been cut near the initials, perhaps to fit a rope or hold a measuring line. It was ordinary scrap until someone knew whose hands had shaped it.
“Lora may know who can return it,” he said.
“Ask her whether they want it,” Iven replied. “Don’t arrive with it as if you’ve brought a gift.”
Arda wrapped the timber separately from the records and wrote its location on the cloth. “I’ll keep it until someone’s asked.”
She checked the inner doorway again. “The upper support has moved.”
They went to her. A chalk line crossed the timber and the wall behind it. The two halves were separated by less than a finger’s width, but they had aligned when Arda checked yesterday.
“Can you tell which way?” Iven asked.
“The timber moved toward the pit.”
“Could the wall have moved?”
“Yes. The mark only tells us the two aren’t where they were.”
She pointed to the floor. A narrow stream of water had appeared beneath the inner door. It carried fine grit toward the outer room.
“The drain’s slower,” she said.
“Can we close the door?”
“It is closed. The water’s coming under it.”
Iven looked at the workbench and the capped pipes. If the pit filled, it might push against the weakened support. If the support failed, the outer room could become part of the pit. They had a reason to leave and a reason to tell the maintenance crew exactly what they had seen.
“Can we measure the water level without opening the door?” he asked.
“There was a sight tube,” Olan said.
He pointed to a narrow pipe beside the frame. Its glass section was clouded with mineral deposits. Iven wiped the outside, but the clouding remained inside. The tube’s lower valve was closed.
“Was this closed yesterday?” he asked Arda.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The handle broke. We didn’t want someone opening it and being unable to shut it again.”
Iven examined the valve. The stem still turned with a spanner. He opened it a fraction while Arda watched the inner support. Water rose into the glass, stopped below the top of the frame, and remained there.
“Higher than yesterday,” Arda said. “There was a mark inside the door. The last reading was below it.”
“Can the drain be cleared from outside?”
“The outlet is at the canal.”
“Then we don’t need the pit.”
They closed the sight valve and left the room. Arda locked the door and marked the changed support on her plan. At the surface, she sent a runner to the canal crew with the water-level estimate and the location of the outlet.
Iven and Olan went to the canal gate while she arranged a barrier around the service stair. The outlet was a low iron grate partly hidden beneath a landing. A mat of weeds and pieces of broken wood had collected against it. Water passed through, but slowly.
Olan knelt at the edge and reached for the grate. Iven caught his arm.
“The current will take your hand under if the blockage shifts.”
“I can reach it.”
“I know. Use the hook.”
He passed Olan a length of bent iron from the nearby work cart. Together they pulled the debris away in small pieces. The first piece came free easily. The second held the rest against the grate; when it moved, water rushed through with enough force to pull the hook from Olan’s hand.
Iven caught it before it fell into the canal. The current drew the remaining debris against the bars, then loosened as the drain began to clear. Olan stepped back, wet to the knees.
“You could have used your graft,” he said.
“I could have. The hook worked.”
They kept clearing until the flow increased. Arda returned and checked the sight tube. The level had begun to fall. She would arrange a permanent inspection, but the immediate pressure against the support had eased.
Iven washed the grit from his hands. The canal water was colder than it looked. Olan stood beside him with the copied records held inside his coat.
“Why are you doing this now?” Iven asked.
“The storage rack fell. I saw the gauge.”
“That can’t be the whole reason.”
Olan looked at the water. “I went to the memorial after the turn. Someone had put flowers there for the people killed in the old accident and for the people killed this week. The flowers were in the same jar.”
“So?”
“I realized I had let the investigation finish because the office said it had finished. I knew the families still had questions. I didn’t want them coming back to me.”
“That’s honest.”
“It isn’t admirable.”
“No.”
Olan gave a tired nod. “I’m not asking you to admire me.”
“What are you asking?”
“Help me find out whether the installed valve was the one on the supplier’s note. If it wasn’t, the pressure test may have been unsuitable for the system we approved.”
“We?”
“I approved the work. You signed the inspection.”
Iven wanted to say that Olan had controlled the shift, that Olan had told him the gauge was unreliable, that Olan had stood between him and the office. All of it was true. None changed the line on the approval sheet.
“I’ll help find the valve,” he said. “The families get the result.”
“Before the office?”
“At the same time. They shouldn’t have to learn from a rumor.”
Olan considered. “I can agree to that.”
“Can you speak for the office?”
“No. I can speak for myself.”
Arda came down the stair with a new warning board. She set it beside the canal gate and painted the date on the lower edge. The drain would be checked again in the evening. Olan offered to carry the crate back to the store; she took one end before he could lift it alone.
Iven walked with them as far as the store door. Olan gave him the copied test slip. The note about the partly open valve was clear in his own handwriting now. It would stay clear when he read it later, even if he wished he remembered the original differently.
At the memorial, the paper boat had been moved beneath the brass plate to keep it out of the rain. Someone had added a small stone beside it. Iven left both where they were and went toward Rung Ward with the copy in his coat.