One hundred and eighty feet above the Eleanor Gorge, the wind didn’t blow in gusts. It screamed in a nonstop, ear-splitting wall of frozen air that felt solid enough to lean against.
Tomas Reed hauled himself over the final granite low roof wall of Tier Three. It rolled onto the flat stone roof of the covered channel. He lay flat on his stomach for five heartbeats, his fingers gripping the carved stone drip-molding. That let his pulse settle as the dizziness of the two-hundred-foot drop pulled back from his vision.
Beside him, Nessa Vale scrambled over the lip, followed right away by Sile Rook. Sile stayed on his hands and knees, his tall body-shield resting flat across his back, his heavy boots finding purchase against the rough, lichen-crusted granite slabs.
They were standing on the very summit of the Grand Aqueduct of Saint Eleanor.
Beneath their bodies ran the Great Pipe. A nonstop stone trough, six feet wide and eight feet deep, through which the high snows of the Sunder Range had flowed for over a century. The channel was roofed with massive, linked slabs of dressed granite, each six inches thick, four feet wide, and weighing over four hundred pounds. It was sealed at the joints with lead and pitch to keep out winter snow and hungry birds.
