By midday Moss's corridor map was a patchwork of closure marks. She had marked the staff washrooms, the service alcove, and the holding-pen access separately so a tired worker wouldn't mistake a dry route for a safe pipe. The armor was still wedged in the elbow, and the next decision had to be made with the water held back.
Frank had made a separate drawing of the pipes. That one was less tidy because the actual dungeon hadn't been particularly interested in the architect's intentions. The overflow from the staff toilets entered an older trunk at a right angle, the monster pens washed into a branch beneath it, and a third line served the west work gallery. Its label on the valve plate read AUXILIARY, which would have been useful if the plate had been installed beside the valve it described.
Ollo stared at the two drawings from the dry edge of the maintenance alcove. "So we've shut the staff feed and the pen line. What keeps the gallery drain from pushing back into us?"
"The gallery's supposed to have a check gate down below," Frank said. "I haven't seen it yet. We need to verify it before we open another cover."
"There's a valve here marked MAIN RETURN." Ollo touched the handle with one finger. "Wouldn't that isolate the trunk?"
"It might isolate the trunk, but the line was modified after this chart was painted. Don't move it until we trace both sides."
Ollo nodded, and Frank went with Dree to check the receiving pit. They were gone only a few minutes, but another surge had started by the time they returned. It came not from the toilets, whose inlet was still shut, but from the west work gallery. Water rolled beneath the door and spread toward a rack of cleaned tools waiting for pickup.
Ollo was standing at the MAIN RETURN valve, his hand still on the wheel. His face showed a terrible understanding of the timing.
"I thought the first closure hadn't seated," he said. "The gauge started rising, and I wanted to keep it out of the pens."
Frank stepped into the alcove and looked at the valve stem. The wheel was turned shut against a stop that didn't match the one on the drawing. The water in the gallery pressed harder against the threshold.
"Don't try to open it yet," Frank said. "We need to know what you closed."
"I shut the return because the plate said it was the return," Ollo said. "It should've kept the water out of the pens."
"You shut something, and the water's telling us it wasn't the right thing. We need to find out what that valve connects to before anybody touches it again."
The red crept up Ollo's ears. He opened his mouth to argue, saw the water passing the threshold, and asked Frank what he needed.
Frank handed him a packet of barrier wedges. "Block the dry tools from the flow and keep the doorway clear for anyone who has to come out. Don't walk through the water until we know whether it reached the nearby trap line."
Ollo was still looking at the wheel when Frank gave him the wedges. The smell of the water struck the living workers before it reached the doorway. One porter cursed and moved the crate of costumes higher; the second simply put down the rope he'd been carrying and stared at the advancing edge. Ollo planted the first wedge with a blow so hard it split, then fetched another without waiting to be told.
"Ease up on the hammer," Frank said. "The wedge only needs to hold the board. You're not driving it through the floor."
"I shut a valve because it had a sign telling me what it was." Ollo kept his eyes on the work. "The sign was wrong, and I trusted it."
"We'll sort the report once we have the water under control."
Ollo returned to the wedges. Only last week he had been pleased when Moss gave him more responsibility with the rota. Some people became careless because they couldn't be bothered. Ollo had been careless because he was frightened of being the one who couldn't fix things. Frank knew from experience that an explanation could make a mistake understandable without making it harmless.
Moss arrived with Nix and a pair of porters before Frank finished the first note to dispatch. She took in the stained corridor and began directing people toward the staff stairs, sending one runner ahead to warn the laundry team not to bring loaded carts into the gallery. She didn't ask who was responsible while the floor was still filling.
"How far does this branch go?" she asked.
"To the old lift drainage pit, if the painted map is right. It may also serve a trap washout. Tev needs to check that connection."
"Then I'm closing both doors. I can put a runner at the public crossing, but I need to know whether we're evacuating staff or just holding traffic."
"Keep everyone out for now. If the water reaches the gallery threshold, move the crews beyond the second bulkhead."
She repeated the plan to Nix, who set off with the notices. One porter began lifting spare rope onto a high shelf. The other, a broad-shouldered kobold, asked whether Frank could give him permission to save a box of costumes waiting by the far door.
"Only from the dry end," Frank replied. "I don't want you trading a box of cloth for an injury."
Tev came to the junction with a probe rod and his dead-circuit tags. He inspected the gallery safety line before stepping across it, then pointed to a newer brass fitting hidden by a coat of old paint.
"That's not the main return at all," he said. "The plate's been turned around. You're shutting the bypass toward the lower pit, which is forcing the water backward through the gallery cleanout."
"Can we reopen it?" Ollo asked.
"Probably, once we've confirmed the downstream connection is clear. If the obstruction there has moved, the sudden flow could rip the check gate out."
Frank crouched beside the sampling point, measuring the water as it rose on the glass tube. The numbers didn't move as smoothly as they should. Water was escaping somewhere else, or air was collecting between two elbows. He drew a quick cross-section in his notebook and held it against the wall map, trying to understand which piece of the pipework belonged to which renovation.
"We need eyes on the little cross-junction," he said. "The inspection plug is too narrow for my arm and too far inside for the mirror."
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RB had been sitting quietly on the cart, made nervous by the constant splashing. At the mention of the junction he lifted his head, slipped over the cart rim, and went to the open service grille. His patches of missing fur exposed dark, scarred skin along his flank, and the thin edge of bone at his hind leg showed when he stretched up onto the stone. He was small enough to enter the dry upper chase, though not the water-filled pipe below it.
"You can look," Frank told him. "Stay above the water. If there's no air, come back."
"You're sending a rat into a drain?" Tev said.
"I'm sending RB into the dry air chase beside the drain, not into the flooded pipe."
Frank removed the grille and tested the upper slot with his lantern. Air moved through it, drawing a faint thread of dust inward, and the floor of the slot stayed several finger widths above the water line. RB vanished into the darkness with a quick click of his teeth.
They waited while the gallery water crept toward the second mark. Dree kept the holding-pen doors secured, and Moss's runner relayed that everyone had cleared the lower corridor. A distant metallic knock came through the wall, followed by two squeaks.
"He's found the junction," Frank said.
"How can you tell?" Ollo asked.
"That's the sound he makes when I get something wrong."
RB scraped at the inspection slot until Frank lowered his lamp. In the reflection of a small window Frank made out a loose rubber flap hanging over the check gate. Each time pressure built, the flap folded across the smaller return and shut it like a door. A torn scrap had caught on the dry upper rim, within reach of RB's nose, though the gate itself remained out of reach below.
RB emerged with his shoulders humped, greasy only where he'd brushed the inspection slot. A scrap of the torn rubber hung between his teeth. Frank bent to take it, but the rat backed away and would not release it until Frank spread a dry rag over his palm.
RB'S THOUGHTS
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"You're not eating that. Put it on the rag, please."
Two squeaks answered him. He inspected the exposed patches on RB's flanks for cuts before opening the rag and showing Tev the piece. The rubber was cracked along one edge, with an old line of dirt worked into the split. Tev ran a nail along the crack and frowned.
"That didn't tear this morning," Tev said. "I'd like the gate itself before I write down how long it's been like that."
"There is the failure," Frank said. "With the flap loose, each surge folds it across the return. Closing that valve only sends more flow against it." Tev checked the marks against his own diagram before they moved the handle again.
"If we open it gradually, pressure may release through the pit, but we need a catch screen so the torn piece doesn't travel into another fitting."
Ollo had been very quiet. Frank handed him the drawing and asked him to trace the safe route for the water on paper before anyone moved another handle. Ollo worked through the connections, marking the check gate, the lower pit, and the gallery cleanout. Twice he stopped and revised a line after comparing it with Tev's newer drawing.
"The plate was on the wrong side," he said when he'd finished. "But I still turned it without tracing it."
"You turned it without checking, and we'll put that in the report," Frank said. "The wrong label is a defect, too. Neither one cancels the other."
"Moss is going to be furious."
"She'll be glad nobody got caught in the water. Then she can be furious."
The first release began with a narrow opening of the bypass valve. Frank watched the gauge while Tev stood ready at the safe isolation handle. The water in the gallery slowed, then stopped advancing. A little more movement of the wheel sent a heavy rumble through the lower pit; the torn gate fluttered against its frame and released a stream of dark water into the collection tank waiting below.
It took several staged openings, and a great deal of patience, to lower the pressure without dislodging the damaged gate entirely. Dree tested the pen-side drains and confirmed that no contaminated water had entered the animals' drinking supply. Nix and the porters removed the damaged costumes from the dry side, while Moss kept the gallery closed until the surface could be washed and inspected.
When the gauge finally steadied, Ollo offered to take the next inspection cover. Frank shook his head and gave him a clean rag instead.
"First you help write a proper diagram. The next crew deserves one they can trust."
Ollo took the rag, folded it around his wet hands, and nodded. "I'll stay until it's done."
The line was stable but not fixed. The armored obstruction remained lodged in the elbow, the torn check gate needed replacement, and the automatic trap washout could not safely run through the same branch while the floor stayed compromised. Tev circled the scheduled reset on his work sheet. They had less time than any of them would have liked before the next mechanical cycle.
Outside, Moss was explaining the alternate washroom route to a kitchen porter who wanted to know whether anybody had stocked soap at the northern facilities. Frank heard her send someone to check. Workers still had to get through a shift while Maintenance sorted out the pipe.
At the far staff barrier Bob was asking a runner whether a CLOSED sign applied to somebody who had already gone through it once. Moss sent him to fetch more chalk instead of answering a third time. By the time Frank looked up again, Bob had returned with an empty box and a question about where the chalk was kept. RB, standing beside the cart after his inspection, gave an impatient chitter.
"He says I should put the chalk in this box," Bob announced. "He has a head for supplies, that one."
RB'S THOUGHTS
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Frank handed Bob the empty box and pointed down the hall. "You find the chalk. He has enough suggestions already." There was no reason for an apprentice to endanger a pipe just because he was not much help with a sign.
RB climbed back into the cart and allowed Frank to inspect his hind leg, though he complained throughout with small clicks and tried to pull the greasy strip out of the evidence bag. Ollo came over after the water stopped advancing. He had changed his wet gloves but not his apron, and his hands shook a little as he asked for the corrected diagram. Frank gave it to him. They stood against the wall while Ollo copied the junction with deliberate care, leaving space for Tev to add the inspection measurements in the morning. The workers still had a flooded gallery, and nobody was eager to go home and explain why.
"You can keep the diagram until we file the report," Frank told him. "Then we have to work out why every pipe on this floor thinks it belongs somewhere else."
By the time Frank reached the dining room, the supper crowd had thinned to the night crew and a pair of goblins playing a game with bottle caps. Ollo was sitting at the far end of the table, copying the corrected valve diagram into a clean notebook. Frank took a seat without offering to help. For several minutes all he heard was the caps striking wood. Finally Ollo closed the notebook and asked whether Moss had said anything about taking him off maintenance duty. Frank could only tell him she hadn't spoken to him about it. Ollo pushed the bottle caps across the table and explained the rules twice. Frank still managed to mistake which color counted double, and Ollo laughed hard enough to spill half the pieces. Frank wanted a rematch. Ollo finally forgot to watch the dining-room door while he counted the pieces.