Blackbasin

A hold built around a guarded reservoir in the lower levels, where the wardens know the basin's level, its inflow, and what fails downstream if it drops. Two or three thousand live there, and its quarrels with neighbouring holds over water drawn beyond a share have twice come to axes at the sluices. Over the main sluice a warden's grave-marker is cut into the gate itself: He held the gate; the gate held. He stood in a breached reservoir gate with his shoulder to the leaf while the hold's cradle-chambers were carried up past him, and the water took him when the last child was clear.