Rassa Vale didn’t touch the cracked brass bell right away. He sat in the low, smoke-blackened circle of the disused kiln, his breathing a thin, whistling rattle that sounded like dry gravel sliding through an iron chute. His gnarled knuckles tightened around the frayed border of his horse blanket until the skin over the joints turned white as rendered sheep fat.
The circular room was stifling, retaining the stale heat of the central hearth where a shovel-full of rotten-egg lignite smoldered. Along the curved brick walls, rows of rough pine shelves sagged under the weight of piled up debris. Glass inkpots crusted with dried gall, rolled linen elevations tied with rotted string, and rusted iron measuring tongs whose pivot pins had frozen in the damp air. Salt had leached through the lime mortar between the bricks, forming long, weeping beards of white bitter salt that looked like frost in the harsh green glare of the three overhead copper lanterns.
The bell sat between them on the cedar packing crate, resting upon a square of greaseproof drafting linen. In the unbending light of the wicks, the fractured lip of the brass seemed to hold its own shadow. A dark, jagged seam that cut straight through the stamped postal serial number. Then he ran into the mid-air crown.
