The cooling bay behind Annealer One smelled of horsehair felt, boiled linseed oil, and the dry, flinty odor of cooling heat-proof glass.
While the smoke in the central hall was being cleared by thirty workers swinging canvas baffles toward the exhaust chimneys, the handling of Melli Dorn’s sixteen heat panels needed a delicate, clockwork care that contrasted brutally with the sledgehammer work at the claimant cabinet. A single sudden draft of freezing mountain air across a bare corner could induce heat shock, running a tiny fracture through two inches of hardened glass and reducing four months of skilled foundry labor to a heap of jagged cullet.
Len Vey stood at the entrance to the cooling bay, his sounding pole planted firmly between two iron floorplates. His braced left arm was held rigid against his ribs. Over his shoulders, he wore an extra wool mantle that Bram Ash had brought up from the gatehouse, its heavy gray weave pinned over his linen sling to protect the fractured radius from the cold draft now entering through the blown high window row windows.
In the center of the bay sat the sixteen wooden hand-barrows, specially built by the Quarry carpenters two days prior. Each barrow was framed from seasoned white ash, fitted with double-elliptic leaf springs salvaged from decommissioned rail carts, and lined with three layers of thick, boiled-wool horse blankets.
