The roar of the Blackwater River on the other side of the iron gate sounded like the breathing of a huge, chained beast.
At the southern terminus of the great stonework drainage tunnels, forty paces beneath the fortified river embankments of Oakhaven, stood Outfall Sluice Gate Number Three.
It was a huge drop-gate forged from pig iron six inches thick, designed during the Great Flood of the First Dynasty to prevent high river crests from backing up into the city’s sewers. Its upright iron bars, thick as draught-horse legs and green with hundreds of years of river slime, were anchored deep into the living solid mountain stone of the cliffside.
Through the two-inch gaps between the iron bars, the swollen, black water of the river was visible, churning in violent, white-capped whirlpools beneath a stormy winter sky. Rain lashed against the iron lattice, mixing with the freezing spray that misted the stone quay.
The three flat-bottomed river barges were loaded and waiting in the pool.
Forty-two refugees—weavers with scarred hands, mothers clutching silent infants, and elderly lepers wrapped in coarse wool—sat huddled on the floorboards beneath canvas tarpaulins. Twelve mutinous Justiciar Knights stood along the boat sides, their broadswords sheathed, their long ash barge-poles planted against the stonework walls to keep the wooden hulls from smashing against the stones in the surging backwash.
On the center barge, Brother Ren lay securely wrapped in dry blankets, his breathing deep and even under the watch of Mira and Father Garrow.
At the head of the basin, standing before the locked water gate, stood Ren Vale and Sergeant Justin.
Above their heads, thirty feet up a narrow iron upkeep spiral, the winch house was lit up by the flickering yellow light of whale-oil lanterns. Through the iron grating of the watching hatch, the shouts of the parish court guards were muffled but clear:
“Keep the chains locked!” a harsh voice barked from above. “The Judge-Prelate is dead, but the Synod’s warrants remain active! Don’t raise the iron! Let the heretics drown in the cellar!”
Heavy iron bars thudded into place across the overhead trapdoor. It was followed by the clanking of chains.
“They’ve wedged the balance weight gears with pig-iron wedges,” Justin said. He tested the massive iron lift-chains with the tip of his broadsword. “The links are four inches of forged iron. We could hack at them with cold chisels for six hours and not take a tooth off the steel.”
“We don’t have six hours,” Vane Vale said. He stepped up to the gate with his umbrella tucked beneath his arm. “The river crest is rising two inches every ten minutes. In half an hour, this basin will experience water-flow inversion. The water from the river will force its way through the lower intake and fill this vault to the ceiling. If we’re not through that gate in five minutes, we’ll be floating belly-up like poisoned trout.”
“We’re going through the gate,” Ren Vale said calmly.
The contract ledger ratified: Blackwater Exodus. Flotilla Composition: 3 River Freight Barges (Flat-Bottomed Ore Barges). Manifest: 42 Leper Refugees / 12 Mutinous Justiciar Knights. Main Casualties: Brother Ren (Comatose) / Mira Vale (Stable). Obstacle: Iron Portcullis Sluice Gate #3 (High court Ward). Breach Instrument: Tight-packed Rotting Vellum Charge (Careful Inversion).
Ren reached into his leather apron, drawing out his careful scribe’s roll.
He unrolled the blackened pigskin kit upon an overturned oak crate. Inside were not razor-sharp scalpels or lockpicks, but the tools of an archival keeper. Vials of packed gallic acid, jars of powdered charcoal and sulfur, a bottle of volatile glass-like spirits distilled from discarded potion-made reagents, and three sheets of cured, rotting thick parchment salvaged from the catacomb writing hall.
Ren laid the three sheets of rotting thick parchment flat against the stone.
With his mammoth-bone awl, he began to scribe.
He didn’t draw magical circles or chant prayers of power. Ren had zero mana channels. His nervous system was an empty copper wire that carried no divine current. Instead, he operated on the pure physical and chemical laws of careful document destruction.
He inscribed a triple-clause Writ of Sacerdotal Dissolution directly onto the rotting thick parchment:
Clause One: The iron was forged by secular guild-smiths.
Clause Two: The seal was registered to the First High court. Clause Three: The High court is bankrupt. The debt is defaulted. The bond must snap.
Into the fresh, wet gall-nut ink, Ren sprinkled a measured pinch of crystal-hardened fulminate salt and three drops of volatile glass-like oil. The chemical mixture soaked instantly into the porous connective tissue fibers of the thick parchment. That turned the dried calfskin semi-clear and unstable.
Ren rolled the three inscribed sheets into tight, thumb-thick cylinders.
“Justin,” Ren said. “Help me with the lift-pins.”
Ren climbed the narrow iron ladder beside the gate. He reached the main hinge-pins where the six-inch iron leaves were bolted to the solid mountain stone. Each hinge was held by a three-inch steel shear-pin, crusted with hundreds of years of rust and red-lead paint.
Ren slid the three rolled thick parchment cylinders directly into the narrow limit gaps between the hinge-pins and the rock sockets.
He reached into his pocket and drew out his flint and steel.
“Justin! Get everyone down on the barge decks!” Ren shouted down into the echoing vault. “Cover your heads!”
Justin sprinted back toward the quayside, roaring orders: “Shields up! Heads down beneath the boat sides! Don’t look at the gate!”
On the barges, the knights locked their heavy heater shields over the huddled refugees. They formed a solid iron roof across the wooden hulls. Mira pulled a heavy wool blanket over Brother Ren and crouched low beside the stretcher. Her quartz hand tucked was tight against her chest.
Ren struck the flint.
SPARK.
A shower of bright orange sparks cascaded onto the exposed edge of the rotting thick parchment roll.
The fulminate-treated parchment didn’t merely catch fire. It blew up with the bone-shaking, ear-splitting crack of a lightning strike inside a sealed barrel.
KABOOOOOOOM!
A blinding flash of violet chemical fire lit up the entire underground basin.
The explosive gas spreading, trapped inside the tight tolerances of the iron hinge sockets, generated hundreds of tons of lateral crushing pressure in a heartbeat. The three-inch steel shear-pins didn’t bend. They snapped clean through with a high, metal shriek that sounded like an iron rail snapping under a locomotive.
The six-ton iron drop-gate tore loose from its granite moorings.
The huge iron gate tilted outward, hung suspended for a terrifying heartbeat over the churning black deep pit of the river. Then plummeted into the depths with a huge, geysering splash that sent fifty-foot waves washing back into the vault.
The river was open.
A howling gust of freezing winter wind and driving rain tore into the underground chamber, extinguishing the lanterns and carrying the clean, wild scent of open water, pine forests, and storm clouds.
“Cast off the mooring lines!” Ren roared, sliding down the wet iron ladder and leaping onto the deck of the lead barge. “Push off! Push off into the current!”
The Justiciar knights leaned their full body weight against their long ash poles. They drove the blunt iron tips against the stone quay.
The lead barge lurched forward, its flat wooden bottom sliding smoothly across the foaming water. The second barge followed, connected by a heavy hemp tow-rope. Then the third, carrying Vane Vale and the leftover rearguard.
They cleared the stonework arch of the water gate tunnel, emerging from the dark bowels of Oakhaven into the wild, terrifying expanse of the Blackwater River.
The river was swollen to its banks by the winter floods, a churning, mile-wide highway of black water that rushed south through the mountain gorge under a sky of torn, slate-grey clouds. High above them on the towering limestone bluffs, the burning outline of Oakhaven glowed against the night. The shattered lantern dome of the Basilica of Dawn was a crown of dying red embers. The bells that had tolled the hours of servitude for three hundred years were silent.
The barges were caught instantly by the huge power of the central current.
The river didn’t welcome them. It tested them with cold, pouring fury.
Massive swells of dark water slammed against the oak strakes of the barges, sending shuddering shakes through the hull timbers that made the rivets squeal in their drilled holes. Sergeant Justin braced his boots against the center thwart. He shouted rhythmic commands to the knights on the steering oars as they navigated the dangerous gravel bars where the river bent sharply beneath the granite palisades.
‘Keep the bow into the white water!’ Justin bellowed over the roar of the gale. ‘Don’t let the stern swing into the eddies! If the tow-rope fouls on an underwater willow, we will broach and roll!’
Under the soaked canvas tarpaulins, the refugees huddled together for warmth, sharing wool blankets and whispering prayers of deliverance that were no longer directed to the Basilica of Dawn, but to the quiet, grey sky. For thirty of the lepers, this was the first time they had seen the open sky in ten years. They had lived in the unending limestone twilight of the Leper Wells, breathing sulfur mist and listening to the bells of their oppressors. Now, the cold winter rain stung their scarred faces like a baptism of wild freedom.
On the third barge, Vane Vale was clinging to a mooring cleat with both arms, his ruined frock coat plastered to his back. His ivory-headed cane was tucked between his knees.
‘An entirely secret nautical expedition!’ Vane yelled across the churning foam between the hulls, his voice competing with the roar of the river. ‘We have no pilot’s charter! We have no river insurance! If a royal patrol cutter intercepts us in this channel, we will be charged with eighty-four counts of maritime insubordination and tax evasion! And my leather boots are soaked with river-bed silt! Silt that will permanently degrade the calfskin!’
Mira glanced back from the center barge. That let out a soft, breathy laugh that caught in the freezing wind. Even in the midst of a desperate winter flight, Vane’s commercial neurosis was an unbending constant. A strange, ridiculous anchor that kept the madness of their world grounded in numbers.
The timber hulls creaked and groaned as they sped up into the rapids, throwing blinding sheets of cold spray over the bow. The knights planted their steering oars, fighting the churning eddies with gritted teeth to keep the flotilla lined up with the deep channel.
Ren stood at the bow of the lead barge, his boots braced against the wet oak deck, his black hair whipped by the freezing gale.
He looked back one last time at the burning dark shape of the cathedral city sinking below the horizon.
Beside him, Mira stood holding the gunwale with her left hand, her face wet with rain. She looked out toward the dark, wild forests that lined the northern shore.
“We’re out, Ren,” Mira whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of terror and awe. “We’re really out.”
“We’re out of the basin, Mira,” Ren said, wiping the river spray from his eyes. “Now we have to cross the Ashen Plains. And reach Fort Karst.”