The pump steadied after a quarter hour.
Sen and Breda brought it back while Mara stood at the manifold gauge and read it aloud every few seconds while Sen and Breda went down a hatch in the chamber floor that Mara had not known was there, into the pump room below, and did something with wrenches and a bleed valve that Mara could hear through the stone but not see. The needle swung, and settled, and swung less, and settled. The pumps’ thump found its rhythm again.
Sen came up the hatch with her hands black to the wrist.
“Air in the line,” she said. “Someone upstairs shut a valve on the hall’s side when they took the hall. Didn’t know what it fed.” She wiped her hands on a rag. “Bled it. It’ll hold.”
She stayed on her feet.
She looked at Mara instead. “You read that gauge well,” she said. “Every few seconds, without being asked.” She looked away, up the shaft. “Hollis does that.”
She went to a conduit by the pump room hatch, a smaller pipe than the nine, running up the wall beside the cold stair, painted the faded green of old guild work. Bolted to it, at shoulder height, there was a handset. Black. Old. With a curly cord and a crank at its side, like the field telephones the river crews used on Cinder.
