The sound traveled through the copper channel with the bell-like clarity of a struck tuning fork. To an untrained ear, the metal ringing might have sounded like steam bubbles collapsing in a boiler or the spreading of metal under shifting pressure. But Tomas Reed had spent his youth on the granite wharves of Bellwether, where river porters communicated across flooded lock chambers by striking iron pry-bars against the hollow mooring posts.
TAP... TAP-TAP... TAP. A three-second silence, followed by two rapid, double-strikes: TAP-TAP... TAP-TAP.
Tomas didn’t hesitate. He set the blunt handle knob of his bronze chisel against the copper pipe four feet above the water line, drew back his ash-wood mallet. Then he struck three sharp, measured blows: CLINK... CLINK... CLINK. Then, pausing for the space of two heartbeats, he struck a single, heavy stroke that made the entire length of the tube hum with a clear, shaking ring: TONG.
In the language of the river draymen, the message was unequivocal: Three souls alive. Stand by to receive.
Beside him, Hester Quill stepped down from the dry stone base, her skirts gathered carefully above the rising black water. It now reached nearly to her calfskin boot-tops. She leaned close to the pipe, her reading glasses catching the dim orange halo of the dying lantern flame. “Is it Nessa?” she asked in a low whisper, careful not to disturb the air column inside the tube.
