A bitter north wind screamed across the melted rock waste heaps of Low Bellwether at the eleventh hour of the night, driving needle-sharp pellets of frozen sleet through the narrow alleys of the South Foundry. The Black Sluice canal was black as pitch, its sluggish surface churning with chunks of greasy, soot-blackened ice that bumped softly against the stone wharf piers.
Tomas Reed stood upon the timber lock-bridge of Lock Three, his heavy canvas coat buttoned tight to the throat, his woolen scarf pulled over his chin. In his right hand, he held a shuttered dark lantern. His left arm, stiff and aching in the bitter freeze, was held secure inside his leather harness.
Beside him knelt Nessa Vale. She had unscrewed the brass extension rods of her sounding staff. She drove the hardened steel spike deep into the frozen mortar seam between two massive granite coping stones. She held the receiver of her sound horn pressed firmly to her right ear, her eyes closed, her brow furrowed in fierce, packed math.
For three minutes, she didn’t move, clueless to the freezing sleet that coated her wool cap in white rime.
Tomas watched her face. In the dim amber glow of the lantern, he saw her jaw suddenly clench, her hazel eyes snapping open with an alarm so deep that it cut through the icy night like an alarm bell.
