The cellar beneath the abandoned copper foundry was an underground tomb of blackened cast-iron boilers, broken baked-clay crucibles, and knee-deep piles of coal melted rock waste.
Water seeped through the mortar of the western wall, trickling in sluggish, iron-stained rivulets that smelled of sulfur, damp copper, and dead moss. At the far end of the cellar, half-buried behind a collapsed rack of oxidised copper metal bars, stood the sealed hearth of the old hypocaust boiler. An arched opening of soot-caked firebrick, fully plugged with three tons of compacted granite rubble and high-pressure lime.
Vane Vale walked the outer edge of the chamber with a sputtering oil lamp. His sharp eyes took in the rusted winches and discarded iron molds.
“The town records were right,” Vane said. He tapped the sole of his boot against an iron floor-plate. “The foundry was foreclosed eighty years ago for non-payment of the coal excise. The owners ran out of credit, the court guards sealed the chimney, and nobody has set foot down here since the reign of Chancellor Vane the Elder. The entire block is legally chosen as unsafe salvage.”
Lord Ren leaned against a massive brick pier. He tested the mortar of the sealed hearth with the tip of an iron pry-bar. The metal scraped against the high-pressure lime with a dull, gritty screech.
