The Iron Sluices

How long does it take five hundred tons of muddy canal water to turn a narrow spillway into an iron coffin?

I had about four minutes to figure it out.

The municipal sluice gate slammed into its stone bed with a concussive boom that shook the wooden catwalk under our boots. Black river water instantly backed up against the reinforced iron grates, swelling into a churning whirlpool. Ten yards above our heads, the dawn light vanished behind the flared rims of heavy bronze shields.

"Warder Liko!" Watch Captain Teru's voice boomed from the upper pier catwalk, amplified by the brass horn fixed to the railing. "Step away from the thieves and lay down your boundary blade. By decree of the South Suna Directorate and the Harbor Exchange, this culvert is designated a quarantine perimeter. Any entity attempting to breach the lower basin will be neutralized as an unauthorized anomaly."

A kinetic arbalest bolt shattered the timber planking three inches from Muli's left heel. The clerk let out a strangled yelp and dropped flat against the slimy cedar boards, dragging his satchel over his head.

"He's shooting at us," Muli wheezed, his fingers clawing into the damp wood. "He's actually shooting at us! Baya gave us thirty minutes to pay the debt, and now the Watch is executing us in twenty seconds! That is a gross violation of standard municipal collection protocol!"

"Shut up, Muli," Jala grunted. The brawler knelt near the drain mouth, his back braced against an iron pillar flange. He held his iron cudgel across his knees, his face pale beneath the grime of the vault collapse. Every breath he took rattled against his cracked ribs. "If you want a receipt, climb up there and ask him for one."

"Everyone stay behind the pillar uprights," I said, dropping the forty-pound lead stasis box into the dry hollow behind the flange. The lead was cold against my palms, but the faint pulse of the stolen anchor hummed right through the metal, vibrating in sync with my teeth. "Teru doesn't want a negotiation. He dropped the flood-seals because Baya told him the Grand Vault was compromised. If we die in this basin, the anchor goes straight into the Watch evidence locker, and Teru delivers it to Baya by noon."

Liko stood pressed against the stone embankment, perfectly still. His uniform coat was torn at the right shoulder, showing the dark bruise spreading where his oath-ward had flared. His dominant hand hung stiff at his side, the fingers slightly curled from the neurological backlash of disobeying the Directorate. Even half-crippled, his posture carried the lethal discipline of a man who measured every fight in angles and heartbeats.

"Teru brought two squads," Liko said quietly, his gray eyes scanning the upper gantry through the rising mist. "Eight arbalests on the main catwalk. Four boundary lancers covering the winch platform. He has the high ground, the gate controls, and full municipal clearance to write off our deaths as an accidental siphon collapse."

"Can we force the lower sluice?" Jala asked. He shifted his weight, wincing as his ribs protested. "I've got enough kinetic charge left in my bracers to pop a hinge."

"You don't have enough charge to pop a beer cork, Jala," Kiri said from the shadows behind the valve casing. She held her sixty-four-cycle tuning fork against the gate's lower rail, feeling the vibration. "The gate is four-inch warded pig iron, seated in lead tracks. It carries an active six-hundred-volt boundary pulse from the municipal exchange. Touch that grate with bare iron and the feedback will boil your marrow before your strike lands."

"Then we go up," I said.

Liko glanced at me. "The gantry is sixty feet of vertical iron lattice. The structural rivets are charged with the same boundary current as the gate. You step on that frame without insulation and you drop straight into the intake vortex."

"I have insulation," I told him, tapping the coil of copper-braided stasis tether looped over my shoulder. "And I have a crowbar with a grounding stake."

"That tether was calibrated for a three-ton suspension gantry in the vault," Liko said. "It wasn't designed for dynamic rope ascension under heavy arbalest suppression."

"It holds three tons," I replied, pulling my copper dagger from its sheath. "I weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. The math works."

"Tani," Liko said, his voice dropping into that low, flat register he used when the odds tilted from bad to suicidal. "Teru's marksmen are trained to lead moving targets on the lattice. You won't have cover once you clear the first twenty feet."

"Then you and Jala better make enough noise to keep their visors pointed down," I said.

I didn't wait for his permission. In Suna, when the water rises, you either climb or you drown, and I had no intention of dying in a drainage ditch with Baya's stolen anchor.

I inspected the iron portcullis. The massive gate blocked the entire thirty-foot channel where the municipal overflow emptied into the harbor. On either side, thick granite abutments rose vertically toward the pier deck. The gate itself was constructed of horizontal crossbeams reinforced by heavy vertical bars, held together by five-inch brass rivets. Every four seconds, a blue electric discharge crackled along the top rail, signaling the boundary current supplied by the municipal powerhouse.

The current ran down the vertical bars, grounding itself into the silt below. But near the second crossbeam, about fifteen feet above the churn, an old iron counterweight bracket jutted out from the granite wall. It was covered in green river moss and thick industrial grease.

"Kiri," I called out over the roar of the water. "Give me the pulse frequency on that junction plate."

Kiri struck her tuning fork against the bronze flange, holding the vibrating tines toward the wall. "Seventy-two cycles! The surge cycles every four point five seconds. You have a zero-current window of exactly one point two seconds between pulses!"

"One point two seconds," Jala muttered, shaking his head. "Plenty of time for a picnic."

"Take the stasis box," I told Liko, passing the lead handle into his left hand. "If I drop, throw it into the deepest trench in the harbor. Don't let Teru touch it."

Liko took the handle. His grip was solid, his gaze locked on mine with an intensity that made the cold spray against my skin feel almost warm. "Get to the upper winch deck, Tani. Trip the emergency hydraulic bypass. If that gate lifts three feet, the current grounds out and we can clear the lower basin on the ebb."

"Watch my back," I said.

"Always," he replied.

I stripped my heavy canvas jacket, leaving only my leather harness, boots, and utility belt. I knotted the end of the copper-braided tether around my waist, double-checking the forged steel carabiner at my hip. Then I pulled my copper dagger and the six-inch bronze grounding spike from my belt loop.

I stepped onto the outer catwalk railing, balancing on the wet wood as the spray soaked my trousers.

"Teru!" Liko's voice suddenly rang out across the basin, sharp and commanding as a parade-ground order. He stepped out from behind the pillar into plain view on the lower gangway, drawing his boundary blade with his left hand. "By Article Nine of the Warder Compact, this sector remains under boundary jurisdiction! Stand down your archers before you violate the border charter!"

Every arbalest on the upper catwalk pivoted toward him in unison.

"Liko, you traitorous hound!" Teru's laughter cracked through the brass horn. "You sold your badge to a gutter thief! Loose on the Warder!"

A volley of six steel-tipped bolts whistled through the mist, striking the granite wall around Liko in explosive showers of stone chips. Liko deflected the lowest bolt with a clean, sweeping arc of his boundary blade, the blue spark of the ward illuminating his hard jawline as he ducked behind the second iron support.

That was my opening.

I leaped from the railing, throwing my weight across the three-foot gap to the warded portcullis. My boots slammed into the wet granite flange beside the outer gate frame. The stone was slick with algae, but the rubber lugs on my soles caught the edge of a masonry seam.

My left hand drove the copper dagger deep into the junction seam between the iron gate track and the stone wall.

A sharp jolt of static surged through the hilt, snapping against my palm. The copper acted as a lightning rod, drawing the six-hundred-volt boundary pulse away from the immediate iron lattice and dumping the load directly into the wet granite. Blue sparks sprayed across my knuckles, smelling of burnt ozone and river mud.

"Zero point eight seconds left on the cycle!" Kiri shouted from below.

I kicked off the masonry seam, grabbed the second horizontal crossbeam with my gloved right hand, and hauled myself upward. My shoulder muscles burned, but the momentum carried my waist above the first bracket. I slammed the bronze grounding spike into a rivet hole, jammed my boot into the forged loop, and stood.

Ten feet off the water.

Above me, an arbalest bolt shattered against the iron bar six inches above my helmet. The impact rang through the metal like a funeral bell, spraying hot brass fragments across my forearm.

"Target on the gate!" a sentry shouted from the upper rail. "The thief is climbing the sluice frame!"

"Depress angles!" Teru ordered. "Shoot her off the lattice!"

Two more bolts hissed through the air. One tore through the shoulder seam of my shirt, leaving a burning red welt across my collarbone; the other skipped off the iron bar beside my knee, ricocheting down into the water.

"Hey, grease-buckets!" Jala's roar echoed from the basin floor. The brawler lunged from behind his pillar, hurling a heavy iron flange wrench straight up at the catwalk with all the power in his massive frame.

The three-foot piece of forged iron whistled through the dawn air and smashed directly into the chest plate of the lead arbalest gunner. The sentry let out a wet gasp, lost his footing on the wet timbers, and tumbled over the railing, crashing forty feet down into the churning intake basin.

"One down!" Jala yelled, clutching his side as the effort tore at his cracked ribs. "Who wants the next wrench?"

The upper sentries shifted their fire back toward the gangway, unleashing a steady barrage of suppression bolts that chipped the concrete around Jala's feet.

I didn't stop to watch. I reached up, caught the third crossbeam, and swung my body around the gate's central reinforcement strut.

Twenty-five feet up.

Here, the boundary voltage was thicker, manifesting as a pale indigo corona that crawled over the iron bolts. The static charge raised the fine hairs on my arms, making my skin prickle with cold needles. I jammed my copper dagger into the next contact plate, forcing another localized short-circuit. The ward screamed in protest, a high-pitched acoustic whine that vibrated through my teeth, but the current parted around my hands just long enough for me to scramble past the mid-tier junction.

Thirty-five feet.

The wind from the harbor hit me now, smelling of salt, dead fish, and coal smoke. Below me, the containment basin looked like an ink-well filled with churning froth. I could see Muli huddled beneath the sluice housing, Kiri crouched with her compass, and Liko standing guard over the lead stasis box, his blade held ready in his left hand.

Directly above me, the upper winch platform jutted out from the pier deck.

The platform was built of heavy iron grating, supported by two cantilevered steel trusses. On the platform sat the primary hydraulic bypass cylinder: a massive brass drum connected to a four-inch bronze drive shaft. If I could reach the release lever on that drum, I could disengage the hydraulic locks and drop the gate counterweights, forcing the sluice to lift under its own buoyancy.

"She's almost at the winch deck!" a voice shouted from the parapet.

I reached up, grabbing the lower flange of the cantilevered truss.

A heavy boot suddenly stomped down on the iron grating inches from my fingers.

I looked up. Watch Captain Teru stood on the edge of the winch platform, looking down at me through the slit of his gilded steel helmet. He wore the dark green officer's coat of the Directorate, adorned with gold bullion braid and heavy brass clasps. In his right hand, he held a heavy pneumatic boundary pistol, its three discharge chambers glowing with volatile violet energy.

"Tani of the Suna," Teru said, his voice smooth and devoid of panic. "Baya told me you were persistent. He failed to mention you were suicidal."

"Captain Teru," I said through gritted teeth, hanging by one hand from the truss while my boots searched for purchase on the wet rivets. "Nice coat. Did Baya pay for the gold braid, or did you skim it from the harbor tax?"

Teru leveled the muzzle of the pistol directly at my face. "The Directorate maintains order in Suna, thief. Baya provides the revenue; we provide the peace. A stray rat like you has no place in the balance."

"You're not maintaining order," I said, my fingers tightening around the cold steel flange. "You're selling the town to an anomaly vortex for twenty percent on the gross."

"A profitable margin," Teru replied, and squeezed the trigger.

I didn't try to dodge the blast; in mid-air on a vertical truss, dodging meant falling sixty feet into the rocks.

Instead, I whipped the copper-braided stasis tether from my harness and lashed it upward across the iron grating.

The heavy copper weave struck the muzzle of Teru's pistol just as the pneumatic chamber discharged. The violet boundary bolt hit the braided wire, conducting instantly through the low-resistance copper core. Instead of blowing my skull apart, the energy discharged backward down the conductive line, arcing directly into the brass railing of the winch platform.

The electrical backlash exploded across the grating in a blinding flash of blue-white light.

Teru screamed as the feedback surged through his metal-plated gauntlets. The boundary pistol blew apart in his grip, sending shrapnel whistling across the pier deck. The Watch Captain stumbled backward, clutching his smoking hands to his chest, his boots skidding across the charred iron mesh.

I pulled myself up onto the platform deck, vaulting over the railing in a single fluid roll.

My boots hit the grating, and I came up with my copper dagger gripped in a reverse hold.

Teru was on his knees five paces away, groaning as he struggled to pull a short broadsword from his scabbard with blistered fingers. Behind him, on the main pier parapet, four Directorate sentries were reloading their kinetic arbalests, their eyes wide with shock as they realized I had breached the upper perimeter.

"Stand down!" I shouted at the sentries, stepping toward the hydraulic bypass drum. "Drop the arbalests, or I vent the primary steam cylinder and boil this entire gantry!"

The sentries hesitated, their weapons half-raised.

I reached the massive brass drum. The emergency bypass lever was locked in place by a heavy steel shear pin, stamped with the Directorate's seal. Without wasting a second, I jammed the point of my copper dagger into the cotter gap, braced my boot against the housing, and hauled back with my entire body weight.

The shear pin snapped with a sharp crack.

I threw the lever.

Deep within the stone abutments, the hydraulic valves released with a deafening hiss of compressed steam. The massive cast-iron counterweights dropped down their vertical shafts, and the warded sluice gate began to grind upward, groaning in protest as its lower edge cleared the water by six inches, then a foot, then two feet.

The penned canal water roared as it found an exit, rushing under the rising gate toward the open harbor in a violent, frothing torrent.

"Liko!" I shouted over the railing, looking down into the basin. "The gate is rising! Grab the stasis box and get through the gap!"

On the catwalk below, Liko stepped forward, hoisting the lead lockbox onto his shoulder with his good arm. "Jala, Kiri, move to the channel!"

"We're on it!" Jala shouted, hauling Muli to his feet by the collar of his coat.

We had our escape. The basin was draining, the gate was lifting, and the way to the harbor was open.

Then, from the upper pier deck, a low, wet mechanical clank echoed through the iron chutes.

Teru pulled himself up against the railing, his face twisted in a vicious sneer. His blistered lips pulled back over bloodstained teeth as he reached toward an auxiliary lever mounted to the pier wall.

"You think you're the only ones who know how these locks work, girl?" Teru spat, his voice trembling with fury. "The Directorate doesn't let rats slip through the drains."

He slammed his uninjured elbow down onto a red emergency release.

High above the basin, four heavy iron trapdoors on the pier wall snapped open with a metallic crash. From inside the vertical chute shafts came a sound that froze the blood in my veins: the scrape of heavy steel claws on wet iron, followed by a chorus of low, guttural, metallic baying.

Three massive, brass-collared ward-hounds plunged down the drainage chute, landing with crushing weight directly onto the lower catwalk between Jala and the rising gate.

Their armored jaws snapped shut with the sound of steel bear traps, their glowing boundary eyes fixing instantly on the wounded brawler pinned against the iron grates.

"Jala!" I yelled, reaching for my tether as the hounds surged forward.

Below me, Jala raised his iron cudgel, backed entirely against the churning floodwaters, with nowhere left to run.