By the time they reached the washing yard, Iven understood why Nima had objected to its old name.
Nothing there was washing.
Workers stood beneath long awnings, sorting pale stone over slatted tables. Dust fell into trays instead of being carried away in water. The air rang with small impacts, the clink of rejected pieces against iron and the scrape of wooden shovels.
The process was slower. It was also visible.
A person could follow the rejected material from the table to the covered store without pretending the stream had ceased to exist when it entered a pipe.
Nima met them at the gate with her coat over one shoulder.
“You walked from the upper landing?”
“Since dawn,” Iven said.
