The slaking yard behind kiln three was a lonely, white-crusted expanse of beaten shale and stone dust. It smelled of calcined rock, wet wood ashes, and skin-burning lime steam. The late afternoon sun slanted low across the timber frames of the drying sheds. That turned the drifting lime dust into floating flecks of amber above the four-pace drainage ditch. Long mounds of grey unslaked burning lime powder lay piled under cedar penthouses, covered with tarred canvas to prevent damp evening air from triggering premature hydration and setting the shed roof ablaze with sudden chemical heat.
Orren Vane knelt at the edge of the trench, his grey wool cap shoved back on his balding crown, his heavy leather apron stiffened with white lime paste that had dried to the consistency of crusty mortar. In his right hand, he held a flat iron scraper. In his left, he held a smoking tin grease-lamp that threw a yellow beam into the damp, shadowed recess beneath the wooden drainage grating. His breath wheezed in his barrel chest, the harsh labor of forty years in the lime pits having scarred his lungs with fine dust, each breath in sounding like dry river silt shifting under a heavy boot.
