The iron base of the storm lantern met the handle knob of the mammoth-ivory awl with the sound of a blacksmith’s sledge striking cold anvil steel.
The shock traveled straight up Ren’s forearm, rattling his elbow joint and jarring his teeth in his jaw. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The three-inch forged iron security pin held fast within the sleeve of the bypass valve, stubborn with sixty years of undisturbed rust and royal seal-grease. Then, with a high, crystal-clear shriek that sliced through the roar of the rising flood, the metal parted.
A clean, slanted fracture snapped the pin in twain.
The huge four-foot cast-iron wheel didn’t begin turning slowly. Driven by the head-pressure of two million gallons of boiling, potion-made run-off trapped in the chute above, it seized the axle and spun into an immediate black blur. The bronze gear teeth howled against the ceiling vaults, throwing showers of orange sparks that hissed as they struck the churning water.
Somewhere sixty feet above their heads, inside the intake spillway of the Tanner’s Basin, a titanic balance weight of quarried granite dropped through its upright shaft.
The sound that followed was like the tearing of thick sailcloth amplified ten thousand times. The heavy water gate doors at the base of the public spillway groaned, buckled, and slammed downward into their recessed channels.
