Water has no mercy, but rotting wood has even less.
Tomas was waist-deep in the black salt water of the lower magazine, his gloved hands threading the second rawhide lifting strap beneath Crate Number Four. The crate was three arm-lengths long, bound in white-crusted lead banding. He sat on the center span of the heart-oak shelf. Above him, the inverted dome of the diving bell hovered three inches from the underwater stone pier. Its twin quartz ports cast amber shafts of lantern light through the dark water.
Without a sound, without a creak, the six-inch oak beam beneath the crate gave way.
It didn’t split along the grain. Nineteen years of sulfuric acid had turned the center of the timber into black, crumbly sponge. Under the deadweight of the four leftover crates on the tier, the shelf sliced through five inches from the central support bracket.
Crate Number Four dropped six inches, tilted thirty degrees toward the dark settled mud deep pit. Then he began to slide.
“Tomas!” Sile’s voice exploded through the brass voice-pipe, muffled by the water around the bell’s open rim.
Tomas didn’t think. A porter on the river docks doesn’t deliberate when a barrel rolls off an unbraked wagon. If he jumped back into the bell, the crate would strike the second tier four feet below, fracturing ten glass spheres and exploding five hundred pounds of potion-made fire in an enclosed stone vault.
