The inside of the western headworks vault was ice-cold. It shook with the ear-splitting roar of twelve sea-weights of deep water pressure churning through the dark rock-cut tunnels.
Tomas Reed stepped through the heavy bronze upkeep door. His tin dark-lantern cast a narrow, yellow beam across the damp flat stone slabs. Behind him came Sile Rook and Caleb, the old ditch-reeve of Canton Vane, who carried a heavy iron crowbar and a six-foot oak lever wrapped in greasy burlap.
Before them rose the massive assembly of the Western Bypass Sluice. A massive cast-iron valve-chest ten feet tall, its pipe rim-bolts sweating thick beads of water drops, bolted directly over the main diversion channel that shunted mountain water toward the private lakes of the Silver Tarns.
Tomas stepped up to the valve stem. Stamped into the iron casing was the raised stone carving: Crown Water Board · Emergency Valley Relief Valve No. 1 · 400 Miners’ Inches.
The rising-stem of the valve was a four-inch screw of solid glowing bronze, threaded through a heavy cast-iron yoke. Through the spokes of the five-foot cast-iron hand-wheel ran a three-quarter-inch case-hardened steel chain, secured with a massive High court box-padlock lacquered in black pitch.
