The relay from Meridian asked for the alignment reading at the third hour of Lorn’s afternoon.
Anwen was at the return. Lorn’s seventh channel had gone in that morning, installed by Nemi’s technicians from one of the shops’ channel bodies: a spiral of pliant iron through the heart housing’s outer shell, the same as Hearth’s but smaller. Sized to Lorn’s share of the relief. Its lining lay cut on the bench beside it, waiting. The governor stood on its own bench, wired in, its lever at rest.
The return had to pass its alignment before the outlet could open. The spiral’s mouth had to sit at exactly the right angle to the heart’s inner chamber, so that when a relief pulse came along the bridge from Hearth and the governor let it through, the pulse entered the lining at thirty-one degrees and turned and went out. A degree off and the pulse would hit the lining side-on and come back.
“Alignment reading,” the relay operator said. A man’s voice, from Meridian’s relay room, tinny with distance. “The well’s clock is running. The engineer asks for Lorn’s alignment before the outlet opens.”
Anwen heard it.
She heard the clock in it. The well’s clock: the seal’s closing time, on Eshel’s plate at Hearth, on the board in Meridian’s operations office. Every hour Lorn’s outlet was not open was an hour the well poured pressure into the lattice with only Hearth’s return to let it out. She could feel the clock pressing…
