Dying cherry-red embers glowed in the smithing hearth at the corner of Eren Tal’s yard, throwing long bronze shadows across the anvil block and the heavy timber stitch-pony. The air smelled sharply of scorched stone dust, sulfur smoke, wet river reeds, and cold evening fog rolling off the canal. On a sheet of clean iron plate lay three heaps of pale, porous grey gravel gathered from the upper gravel bars of the High Tor.
Foreman Eren Tal stood over the iron mortar block with a heavy iron pestle and a fine-mesh bronze sifter. His broad back was knotting with fatigue after seven hours over the anvil and the stitch pony. Beside him, Master Tailor Dima Fen sat on a three-legged stool with the chest panel of Korr Var’s coat spread across his knees, pinning twelve upright quilting channels with brass bodkins.
Hot under-road drain stone reached 140°F. It needed an insulating chest panel that wouldn’t crack or add dangerous ballast weight. Clerk Varo Nenn’s latest ledger comparison proved that during the unlogged midnight purges, the stone ceiling of the Silt Gallery radiated nearly 150 degrees Fahrenheit. It was hot enough to blister a land-mapper’s chest through two layers of oiled wool within four minutes.
