From the shadow of the ruined beehive kiln’s brick stone support prop, Kezra Venn had a clear line of sight across fifty paces of mist-shrouded clay, weathered timbers, and wet stone.
The morning chill bit through the coarse wool of her trousers, seeping up from the damp ground where she knelt with one knee braced against the glass-fused brickwork. Over her head, the arched mouth of the abandoned kiln curved like the ribs of an old river barge, its inner surface black with thirty years of soot and crusty with deposits of green salt-glaze.
The dawn was breaking in earnest now, peeling back the thick grey wool of the mountain fog to reveal the hard, utilitarian bones of Kilnstep. To the west, the jagged limestone scarp of the high quarries rose like a broken wall against the pale sky. Below it, the village lay huddled in its hollow of grey clay and old lime pits. The cone-shaped chimneys of the six master kilns, the long low cedar roofs of the drying sheds where thousands of unfired plates cured on slatted racks, and the sharp eight-foot crest of the cart-yard retaining wall.
On the outer terrace behind that wall, Fellis Dain moved with the soundless care of a master rigger.
