Eirwen's flag snapped twice on the far ridge, and Loccy's ears swiveled toward it like a pair of brass weathervanes. River spray drifted over the flood gate, and the evacuated road beneath it lay silent, without a single cart left.
'Nobody's left underneath anymore, so now I finally get to be rude.'
She hopped down onto the bearing Ferra marked earlier, the chalk cross still smudged beneath a sooty, crooked little thumbprint. She crouched and pressed both palms flat to the joined platform, and the whole shape answered her all at once.
Platform, beam, counterweight and gate hummed under her hands as one lump, and every piece of it was hers.
Above her, Captain Brann Keld's tower platform shuddered on its chains and slammed down hard against the rusted flood track. The jolt ran through the gate's iron and into her wrists, trying to rip Ferra's coupling out of its seat.
"Nope, no, absolutely not, you don't get to yank my lump apart!"
