The brass legs of the traveling cauldron struck the packed red dirt with a heavy ring.
Sera didn’t ask questions. She drove the butt of her spear into the ground and dropped immediately into a full lotus posture right where she stood. Beside her, Mina set down her basket of sweet potatoes, smoothed her hemp skirt, and crossed her small legs on a woven straw mat.
Linnea practically threw herself across the veranda railing, her eyes wide with frantic horror.
“What do you think you are doing?” Linnea shouted, pointing a trembling finger at the blackened bronze kettle. “You cannot refine Tier 2 medicinal marrow in an unseasoned travel brazier without a proper chimney draft! The thermal back-pressure will crack the alloy and blind everyone in this courtyard!”
She lunged forward to grab the brass tongs, but Barnaby stepped into her path. The one-armed veteran raised his heavy wooden ladle like an iron gate.
“Back off, girl,” Barnaby grunted, his scarred eye gleaming with absolute certainty. “When the third young master takes off his hat and calls for the brazier, you don’t touch the tools. You’ll lose your eyebrows if you get between him and the coals.”
Linnea spun toward Deacon Vane, her face flushed with indignant panic. “Deacon Vane, speak sense to them! The Nine-Cauldron Guild requires three apprentice attendants and a four-hour pre-heating ritual for Tier 2 compounds!”
