They ducked beneath a suspended high-pressure steam main. They stepped over a trench of boiling wastewater into the inner casting bay of Kiln Four.
The heat struck Len with the solid, staggering impact of an oak beam dropped across his chest.
It wasn’t the humid, greasy warmth of the river chimney pipes, and it wasn’t the choking, citrus-scented fire heat of Halden Pell’s parlor. It was an arid, blazing bright blast of white-hot air. It ran past three hundred degrees ten feet from the charging doors, that stripped the moisture from Len’s lips in the space of a single breath. His nostrils clamped shut against the scorching draft. His eyelids burned. And the sweat that broke across his collarbones evaporated before it could bead against his skin. That left a fine, itching crust of dry salt crystals in the hair of his chest.
The air inside the bay was thick with a dense, yellow haze of sulfur smoke and suspended bitter salt dust.
Every time the forced-draft fans pulsed, a fresh cloud of crushed quartz dust sand, anhydrous sodium carbonate, and calcined lime was swept off the batch bins, swirling through the air like a dry blizzard. It settled over everything. Coating the black iron buckstaves in a furry white powder, turning the shoulders of Len’s oilskin coat the color of dead wood ash, and stinging the raw, blistered margins of the line-burn across his right palm with painful, chemical sharpness.
