The Thresher Tide

Tivian sprang over the Csuka's gunwale, dropping into the cramped engine pit. He pulled a hardened bronze drift punch and his heavy four-pound ball-peen hammer from the leather tool roll strapped beside the boiler.

The Silt-Engine's automatic bypass valve was designed to bleed superheated vapor into the exhaust stack whenever internal pressure climbed past four hundred and fifty pounds per square inch. Tivian seated the hardened tip of the drift punch directly against the bypass spring collar.

He swung the hammer with three brutal, rhythmic strikes.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The bronze collar warped under the blows, driving the valve stem down until the bypass port was jammed solid into its seat.

"Bypass disabled," Tivian called out, wiping copper dust and grease from his face. "Every pound of alchemical vapor goes straight down the pressure nozzles into the bronze impellers."

Oszkár clambered into the skiff's auxiliary seat beside the steering gear, his jaw set in grim resolve. He rested the long brass blowtorch across his knees and reached for the cradle trip-lever. "If the main manifold ruptures under that head, Tivian, it'll roast both of us down to our belt buckles."

"Then let's make sure it ruptures inside Szabol's engine bay instead of ours," Tivian said.

Beyond the slipway, the waters of the canal let out a deep, subterranean rumble that vibrated through the stone foundations of the wharf. The Thresher Tide had fully crested the Lower Sluice. The surface of the channel was a swirling, boiling froth of sulfurous yellow sludge, rising at nearly an inch every ten seconds. The corrosive foam hissed furiously as it gnawed into the creosoted dock pilings, dissolving paint and stripping the green slime from the stone walls.

Across the slipway opening, the central dredge-scow pivoted on its spring lines. Standing high on the scow's forward crane gantry, framed against the swirling smoke and the yellow foam, stood Szabol Kengyel.

The cartel enforcer looked massive in his iron-studded diving cuirass. He held a heavy seven-foot boarding gaff in one hand and an iron speaking horn in the other, his scarred face twisted in vicious triumph.

"Lánczy!" Szabol's voice boomed across the water, amplified by the horn. "Look at your yard, old man! The Directorate owns the water from the Siphon to the bay! You've got three minutes to drop your tools and step onto the mud, or we burn you inside your own shed!"

"Trip the cradle dogs, Uncle!" Tivian shouted.

Oszkár hauled on the long iron lever with both hands.

The greased timber cradle dropped from its locking notches with a deafening crash. The Csuka shot down the wet slipway skids, hitting the churning, yellow current with a massive splash that sent burning spray over the bow.

Tivian grabbed the main alchemical firing lever. He jammed the tallow injection needle all the way into the burner throat and wrenched the primary high-pressure throttle wide open.

Inside the Mark IV Silt-Engine, the pressurized charge detonated into instantaneous, superheated vapor.

The engine didn't merely roar—it screamed like a tearing sheet of iron. Four hundred pounds of alchemical pressure dumped into the dual bronze impellers in a single fraction of a second. The stern of the Csuka sank six inches into the yellow slurry as the shrouded impellers bit into the water, churning the caustic mud behind them into a roaring rooster-tail of boiling foam.

The skiff surged forward with violent, neck-snapping acceleration.

Tivian braced his boots against the floor stringers and gripped the iron steering yoke with white knuckles. The Csuka lifted onto plane, skipping across the tops of the incoming tidal waves like a flat stone skipped across a pond. Yellow, acid-laced spray tore across his face, stinging his cuts and burning his eyes, but he locked his gaze onto the dark line where the Bölény's midship iron plates met the water.

The distance closed in a heartbeat. Fifty yards. Thirty yards.

On the cartel scow, Szabol's mocking grin vanished. He dropped the speaking horn, screaming at his crew on the catwalks: "Cross-staves! Cut the bow line! He's coming straight for the midship—"

The warning died in his throat.

The Csuka's reinforced iron ram—four hundred pounds of solid forged iron strapped directly into the oak keel timbers—struck the Bölény precisely at the lead-caulked midship bulkhead seam.

The sound of the impact was like an artillery shell detonating inside an iron tank.

The Csuka's prow tore through the scow's three-eighths boiler plating with a screech of shearing rivets, smashing the green spruce frames behind it into matchwood. The massive dredge-scow lifted bodily out of the water, its timbers groaning in agony as the incoming tidal wave drove the skiff deeper into the ruptured hull. The Bölény's midship section caved inward, and thousands of gallons of boiling, caustic canal water rushed into the shattered cargo hold.

Cartel thugs were pitched from the upper catwalks like ragdolls, screaming as they plunged into the caustic yellow soup that immediately began searing through their clothes and boots. The two flanking scows rolled violently in the resulting surge, their connecting chains snapping under the sudden, massive strain.

The Csuka's impellers screamed in protest as the drive housing ground against torn iron plate. Tivian shoved the throttle lever into neutral just before the over-pressurized manifold could split its copper seams. Thick clouds of alchemical steam and yellow vapor boiled up between the locked hulls, blinding the deck in a white haze.

Through the shrieking steam, a heavy, iron-shod boot slammed down onto the Csuka's forward decking.

Szabol Kengyel lunged through the vapor, his diving cuirass dripping with grease and foul canal water. His face was contorted in murderous rage as he brought his heavy iron boarding gaff down in a savage, sweeping arc aimed directly at Tivian's skull.

Tivian threw himself sideways across the engine housing. The iron hook missed his temple by an inch, biting deep into the oak engine casing and tearing away a jagged chunk of wood.

Tivian scrambled to his feet on the vibrating deck, his twelve-inch diver's knife ready in his right hand and the heavy brass spanner gripped tight in his left.

"You should have stayed at the bottom of the Deep-Drifts, grease-rat!" Szabol snarled, leaping down into the skiff's narrow cockpit, his massive frame blocking the light. Behind him, the shattered Bölény was already settling fast into the mud, dragging down the mouth of the cut.

"You should have bought seasoned oak," Tivian spat back.

Instead of trying to back the Csuka out of the tangled wreckage, Tivian dropped his weight, hooked his boot under the heavy iron four-fluke mooring grapnel lying in the bilge, and kicked it straight into the torn framework of the sinking scow. He grabbed the ratchet handle on the skiff's gunwale and threw his entire body weight against the locking pawl, driving a hardened steel pin through the heavy chain link.

Clack.

The skiff and the sinking cartel warship were now chained together in an unyielding iron embrace. The massive hull of the Bölény slumped onto the channel bedrock, wedging squarely across the slipway mouth like a fortified iron breakwater. The two flanking cartel scows were blocked from entering, their crews scrambling away from the boiling yellow surge.

Szabol looked down at the locked chain, then out at his fleeing scows, realizing the trap he had been forced into. The blockade was broken, but the price was set: the Lánczy slipway was fortified behind twenty tons of sunken iron, and there was no retreat left for either of them.

Tivian stood balanced on the engine housing, his spanner raised and his grip steady. He had chosen his ground, and he would hold it until the tide receded.