The fifty-ton hard dark metal-steel gate hung poised in the empty air ninety feet above the roaring bypass trench, suspended between two worlds.
Above, three hundred commoners stood at the rope winch spokes in the twin winch houses. Their muscles were locked in static pushback. They held twenty-five tons of live cable tension per house. Below, the Inland Sea was foaming over the crumbling rim of the earth coffer-dam. It sent waves of brown water crashing into the rock channel.
Tomas stood on the central overhead frame platform, his hand resting on the master release trip-lever that controlled the dog-clutches of both titan winches. Beside him, Nessa Vale finished retrieving her piano-wire sounding line from the right guide-slot.
“The right slot is clear to the bedrock socket!” Nessa reported, her face flushed with excitement. “Both guide channels are clear! The moment you drop the winches, the gate will slide straight to the doorstep!”
Master Gault stepped to the railing, his timber-jack raised. “Give the word, judge! One trip of the lever, and we drop fifty tons of iron into the water!”
Tomas didn’t drop the lever.
His eyes were fixed not on the bypass channel, but on the upstream face of Pier Twelve, two hundred yards to the east.
