The small iron melting crucible in Eren Tal’s forge was white-hot. It glowed with an intense, shimmering heat that made the surrounding darkness of the shop seem total. The air smelled of charred charcoal, sulfur, fluxing borax, and the sharp, metal tang of molten copper. Eren stood before the hearth, his heavy split-cowhide welding apron strapped tight across his chest, wearing dark tinted glass glasses set in a leather mask.
With a pair of four-foot forged crucible tongs, he lifted the glowing graphite pot from the coke bed. The liquid bell-metal—eighty percent pure canal copper and twenty percent Cornish tin—was blazing bright, smooth as molten sunlight, swirling with a faint skin of gray waste scum.
Beside the hearth stood five cured loam casting flasks. It was bound with iron hoops and bedded in damp river sand. Senior Surveyor Korr Var stood three paces back, holding his pocket watch in one hand and an iron skimming rod in the other. A draft of cold air blew through the riverward high window row. It carried the bitter silt stench of the mudflats and the damp chill of wet stonework.
“Skim the melted rock waste, Eren,” Korr instructed. His voice clipped and was calm above the roar of the chimney draft. “If a flake of iron scale gets into the sound-ring of that bell, the sound deep ring will dampen like a cracked pot. A stop-bell must ring clean for twelve seconds without overtones.”
