The charcoal in the pottery kiln’s central firebox crackled with steady, muted heat.
An Ni pumped the leather double-bellows with rhythmic, measured thrusts of her shoulder.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
A pale blue flame licking from the charcoal bed bathed the low brick vault in an amber glow.
The heavy draft chimney carried the thin, dry heat through three underground baffles. It scattered the exhaust through the willow roots above without leaking a single plume of black smoke.
On the cast-iron anvil lay the twenty-eight-pound Great Blood Severing Cleaver.
Three feet long, five inches wide at the flared tip, and half an inch thick across the spine, the blade was a slab of black glass-pigmented star-fallen cold-iron.
Along the upper ridge, two tube-shaped brass valve ports—each the width of a thumb—sat recessed into the iron spine like tiny cannon breeches.
