The cold was not a heat. It was an iron clamp that closed around the thighs and refused to let go.
Tomas slid his legs down through the open circular bottom of the diving bell. The black water surged up around his grease-sealed waders. He rose past his knees, past his hips, until he stood waist-deep on the underwater oak shelf of the ammunition rack. His boots, weighted with six-pound lead soles strapped over the turn-shoes, found solid purchase on the waterlogged wood.
Above him, from the waist up, his torso remained inside the dry, air-filled dome of the bell. Sile Rook sat on the bench. He held the bell steady against the slanting granite pier with a heavy ash setting pole, his knuckles white under the lantern light.
“Air is holding at fifty strokes,” Sile murmured down to him, his voice buzzing in the high-pressure dome. “Don’t step off the beam, Tomas. The silt floor is four feet below the shelf, and God only knows how deep the mud goes.”
Tomas leaned forward over the underwater shelf. The water was intensely clear, but stinging cold. Even through the three layers of wool and animal fat-greased cowhide, the chill bit into the flesh of his legs, numbing his shins in less than two minutes.
