On the whistling crest of the Diverter, eighty feet above the foaming cooking pot, Tomas Reed felt the three sharp jerks on the hemp messenger line before the signal bell could even ring.
The cord shook in his calloused palm with the clear, wild rhythm of an emergency retreat.
“Haul!” Tomas roared, his voice cutting through the gale. “All four! Walk the drum!”
At the backup winch, the four apprentices threw their dead weight against the oak handles. Sile Rook stepped to the main cable drum, his scarred boot stomping down on the friction brake to steady the take-up as the two-inch wire-rope thick ship rope groaned against the bronze snatch block.
Screeech-clank. Screeech-clank.
The cable snapped taut, spraying droplets of black cable grease across the flat stone slabs as it began to wind onto the drum. Forty yards out on the cantilevered overhead frame arm, the heavy steel cage rose out of the boiling caul of white mist, swaying like a swinging weight in the violent updraft.
Tomas ran out along the overhead frame check narrow high walkway, his cart driver’s boots sure and fast on the narrow iron grating.
He leaned over the safety rail as the cage reached the level of the crest. Through the viewing slit in the sodden canvas wrap, he saw Nessa’s face. She was pale as skimmed milk, her lips blue from the freezing spray, but her eyes were wide. It burned with the total clarity of an engineer who has looked into…
