What Regret Can Lift

Spike had drawn the rising water in blue pencil, which made it look harmless. The apprentice was still trapped in the maintenance room, the iron door stood open, and the channel below it had begun to fill again.

“Water’s coming in from the upper race,” Spike said, moving a blue token along the map. “You’ve got time, but not much. The apprentice can walk if somepony helps him. His foreleg’s hurt.”

Apple Bloom leaned over the table, her pencil tucked behind one ear. “We get him out first. Then we stop the water.”

Twilight’s mapmaker shook her head. “If the lower passage fills while we’re in it, we could all get trapped.”

Big Mac rested a hoof beside the little paper figure representing the apprentice. “Then we stop it first.”

I had the mill owner’s key token in front of me. In my voice, he had been trying to look useful since coming downstairs, which was a difficult pose for somepony who’d spent a week telling himself the missing apprentice had probably run off.

“The west sluice,” I offered, making the owner point to a mark on the map. “It’s supposed to divert the water into the old drainage ditch. The handle sticks.”

Spike checked his notes. “The owner knows that?”

“He’s run the mill for years,” I said. “He knows where everything is. He just hasn’t been down there lately.”

Spike’s eyes stayed on me for a moment, then dropped to the map. “All right. The water’s higher than he remembers.”

We tried the sluice first. Big Mac’s millwright braced the door while Twilight’s mapmaker and Apple Bloom’s courier followed the owner along a service walk to the west gate. Spike described the handle coming up hard, then giving way all at once.

“The gate swings open,” he said, pushing the blue token into the drainage ditch. “But a log’s jammed across the channel. Water’s still backing toward the lower room.”

Apple Bloom’s pencil stopped. “Can we pull the log out?”

“Not from here,” Twilight said, drawing a narrow line that ran beneath the mill. “There’s a second lever below the wheel. But if the water keeps rising, the passage will flood before you reach it.”

The first plan had lasted about three minutes. I knew the feeling. Plenty of campaigns began with a tidy map and a confident party, then introduced one wet log and discovered what the map had left out.

Big Mac’s character looked at the owner. “You know that lower passage?”

I gave the old pony a glance toward the stairwell. “I know it.”

“Then you can show us.”