The firing pit in the center of the kiln was circular, sunken three feet into the red clay floor like a dry water tank.
A small fire of birch kindling burned in the pit, its smoke drawn cleanly upward into the tall central exhaust chimney pipe. Outside, the siege continued. Every eight or ten minutes, a distant, muffled thud shook through the eight-foot stonework walls as a paradox boulder struck the outer apron. But inside the hearth chamber, the air was warm, quiet, and smelled faintly of burning wood.
Ren Vale sat on an upturned clay tub near the fire, his right arm resting in his lap. The cedar splints bound tightly around his broken knuckles ached with a dull, throbbing heat. But the ivory awl remained safe in the deep pocket of his apron.
Across the hearth, two grown men were arguing over an old iron skillet with the bitter, hushed intensity of two cooks in a royal pantry.
“You’re burning off the connective tissue, you total peasant,” Vane Vale hissed. He waved a gold-trimmed brass spatula with dramatic disgust. The Merchant knelt on a piece of sheepskin to keep his velvet trousers out of the red dust, his pocket counting frame dangling from his watch-chain. “Calfskin thick parchment from the Second Dynasty was cured in animal fat and walnut oil. If you drop it directly onto the coals, the fats turn to steam into the chimney pipe. He needs the heat thickness, not an empty breath in of…
