Two hours before mean low water, the western bypass cut had become a roaring gorge of foam, gravel, and yellow foam. Diverted water from the upper karst weirs surged against the temporary spruce cofferdam. It slammed into level timber baulks with bone-shaking force.
Down in the rock trench, eighty feet below the dark rock bluffs of Bellwether, the spray fell like freezing needles against bare skin. The air tasted of crushed slate, river moss, and old grease. Shudders ran through the bedrock beneath Tomas Reed’s boots as floating hemlock logs struck the outer face of the dam.
“The upstream doorstep is weeping four inches of silt a minute!” Orrin Hale shouted from the rim of the digging, cupping his hands against the spray. “The middle timber is bowing two handspans past plumb! When the tidal bore hits the lower mouth, that spruce cofferdam is going to blow like an over-fired kettle!”
Tomas stood on the slippery limestone bench at the lip of the diversion drop. His wool tunic was sodden, but beneath the rough cloth his back burned from hours of hauling gravel. His left forearm was clamped hard inside the calfskin brace, the stiff leather stiffened with river mud. He tried to flex his left fingers. Then, a dull, electric cramp knotted the scarred muscle tissue where the tendon had been shortened by injury. Thirty-five percent of his grip was gone forever. He couldn’t wrap his fingers around an axe-helve and strike a blow, nor could he arrest a falling chain with that hand without tearing the repair apart. He had to think every motion through his right shoulder, his hip, and the clockwork leverage of ash timber.
Beside him, Mara Flint was on her knees, driving cold-iron wedges beneath the timber slip-way. Her face was gray with stone dust and river water, her knuckles raw where the hammer had glanced off the steel.
“The winch pinion snapped!” Mara yelled up at him. She pointed with a grease-blackened wrench at the heavy cast-iron crab winch mounted on the trench platform. “The teeth were cast iron, not forged bronze! When the water backed up against the gate-leaf, the shock snapped three cogs right off the shaft! The gate is hung six feet above the runners, dangling by two hemp falls! If we cut the lines, the stone drops crooked, jams in the granite grooves, and snaps the bypass throat shut!”
Tomas climbed up the slippery pine rungs of the work ladder.
Suspended over the churning black gorge was the great five-ton limestone slab. It hung from a heavy ash timber gallows frame, restrained only by two three-inch tarred manila falls wrapped around an oak snubbing drum. Because the iron winch had stripped, the gate could neither be raised nor lowered with clockwork gears. It had to be guided into the upright stone runners by hand. Levered outward against forty tons of rushing water pressure until its beveled tongue lined up with the granite grooves. Then dropped cleanly into the bedrock pocket.
If the slab struck the lip of the groove by a quarter of an inch off-center, the driving force would shatter the limestone face, wedging five tons of broken stone across the intake and leaving the lower wards defenseless against the flood.
Nessa Vale scrambled up the ladder behind him, her boots splashing through run-off. Her brown oilskin coat was torn at the elbow, and water dripped steadily from the rim of her sound horn. She pressed her hand flat against the oak gallows upright, her fingers reading the rhythmic shudder of the timber as the river hammered the gate.
She looked at Tomas, her sharp, dark eyes narrowing against the stinging mist. She signed with her fingers: Two inches west. Gate twisting under current. Need sixty pounds of lateral push to seat the tongue.
“We can’t push sixty pounds against that head of water from a wet plank,” Tomas said, his voice loud and deliberate so she could read his lips in the lantern light. “The moment we touch the lever, the draft kicks the timber out from under us.”
Nessa wiped water from her face with a rough canvas cuff. She reached out, caught the sleeve of his right arm. Then she tapped the leather strap of her own land-mapper’s satchel. She formed the carrier sign for shared burden. Two thumbs locked together, fingers spreading wide like the wings of a pack-frame.
“Load Share,” she said, her voice dry and rasping against the roar of the water chute. “Ten minutes. We take the oak pry-pole together.”
Tomas looked at her small, wiry frame. Nessa weighed little. Her hearing had been ruined. Just then, the West Bridge arch collapsed under bad mortar, and her joints ached in the rain. Load Share didn’t manufacture miraculous strength from thin air. It divided real, crushing physical mass fifty across two human skeletons. Every foot-pound of torque that pressed on his shoulders would press with equal cruelty on her spine and knees.
“Ten minutes, Nessa,” Tomas said, extending his uninjured right hand. “When the gate drops, let go instantly. Don’t fight the backlash.”
“I know the law, porter,” Nessa answered, clasping his forearm with fingers as hard as seasoned oak pegs. “Consent given.”
A quiet, amber pulse flared behind Tomas’s eyes.
Across his inner vision, the Last Claim slate lit with a deep, iron-gall deep ring: LOAD SHARE ACTIVE. TEN MINUTES RECORDED.
The dead weight of the suspended limestone slab didn’t become light. Instead, the unbearable twisting leverage that had made the ash gallows groan suddenly anchored itself through both their bodies. Tomas felt the shock enter his right collarbone, shoot down his spine, and ground through his iron-shod heels into the bedrock. Across the oak beam, Nessa dropped into a low crouch. Her jaw was clenched. Her neck cords stood out like taut bowstrings as her frame absorbed half the clockwork torque.
“Dren! Take the snubbing line!” Tomas shouted down to the cart driver on the lower platform. “When I trip the pawl, let the rope run four inches! No more!”
Dren wrapped the tarred manila twice around the oak snubbing post, bracing his heavy boot against the timber doorstep. “Ready, Tomas! God help your ribs!”
Tomas wedged the four-inch spruce pry-bar between the ash upright and the left shoulder of the suspended stone gate. Nessa gripped the timber three feet below his hands. It locked her shoulder beneath his right arm.
“Now!” Tomas roared.
They heaved together.
The physical strain was huge, grinding like a millstone against Tomas’s ribs. His scarred left arm, buckled tight against his chest, could only guide the pivot point block, while every ounce of driving moving power came from his right leg, his hip, and Nessa’s unbending leverage. He could feel the pulse of her breathing against his side, timed together with the beating of his own heart. The spruce pry-bar bent into a lethal, creaking crescent.
For five seconds, the five-ton limestone block resisted, suspended between the rushing air and the boiling foam of the cut. The cofferdam behind them gave a sickening, splintering crack as a six-foot hemlock trunk struck the upper baulks. A torrent of yellow mud cascaded over the timber crest, drenching Tomas and Nessa in freezing slurry.
“Hold it!” Tomas yelled through the mud in his teeth. “Nessa, push!”
Nessa threw her head back, her eyes blazing with fierce, silent fury. Then she drove the balls of her feet into the slimy planks.
The stone shifted.
The beveled left tongue of the limestone gate glided two inches to the west, aligning with clean, steady care over the upright granite runner cut into the gorge wall.
“Drop it!” Tomas screamed.
Dren threw his weight backward, casting off the second turn of the hemp fall.
The five-ton limestone slab dropped.
It didn’t slide gently. It plunged like an anvil through the upright runners, shearing through gravel, mud, and waterlogged debris. Its bottom edge struck the granite doorstep below. Then, the impact sent a blast wave through the rock. A geyser of river spray erupted from the bypass throat, roaring toward the bluffs.
The stone held.
Locked into the living bedrock, the bypass gate took the full fury of the river. The diverted current slammed into its limestone face, boiled in violent foam. Then it swung eighty degrees to the left. It plunged down Renn Tal’s terraced gravity spillways into the south holding polders.
Behind them, the water level in the main pool intake dropped five feet in sixty seconds. The groaning spruce cofferdam ceased its splintering strain as the water-pressure head was relieved.
The amber light behind Tomas’s eyes flickered and died.
The ten minutes had expired.
Tomas slumped against the gallows upright, breath tearing in ragged gasps. His right shoulder was bruised purple from the pry-bar. His left forearm throbbed with a cold, sickening fire that made his fingertips go numb inside the brace. Beside him, Nessa sat hard on the timber platform. Her hands shook wildly as she tried to shake the dead weight from her wrists. Her oilskin coat was caked in yellow river clay. But her lips curled in a tight, triumphant grin as she tapped her sound horn against the limestone low roof wall.
Down in the lower gallery, Sile Rook stepped out onto the iron narrow high walkway, hooked pruning blade in hand. He looked down into the emptied intake chamber. There, the water had pulled back to reveal the lower tiers of the bronze framework.
“The throat is clear, Tomas!” Rook shouted up through the mist. “The bypass is taking fourteen hundred cubic feet a second! Fen Hollow is safe! The intake chamber is drained to the doorstep!”
Tomas wiped the river mud from his face with his sleeve and extended his right hand to help Nessa to her feet.
Down at the tunnel mouth, two lanterns appeared in the gloom. Mirelle Voss walked down the stone stairs, her black wool skirts gathered in one hand. She was followed by Aven Lark carrying two heavy pine hampers lined with dry cotton batting and uncoupling tongs.
“The tide has turned,” Mirelle said, her voice clear and steady in the sudden, quiet hollow of the drained vault. “We have forty minutes of slack water, Tomas. Let’s go down and give these people their names.”