By midday, the cold wind on the northern scrub terrace was filled with the rhythmic clink-tock of iron chisels striking old lime mortar.
Old Master Corba, who had managed Kilnstep’s communal firebox repairs since Kezra’s grandfather was an apprentice, knelt beside the open trench with a short-bladed mason’s trowel in his gnarled hand. His leather apron was crusted with thirty years of red clay slip and yellow grog. His eyes were watering from the frost. But he looked down at the exposed brick arch with the sharp hunger of a potter who knew the price of kiln materials.
“High-alumina yellow clay,” Corba said. He tapped one of the exposed arch bricks with his horn mallet. The brick gave back a bright, clear ring like fired bell-metal. “Fired in the deep updraft kilns down at Brackenford before the Host put toll gates on the river road. You can’t buy brick like this today for less than three silver pennies a dozen, even if the wagons could get through Vale’s pickets. If you had smashed this chimney pipe with a sledgehammer to clear your survey line, Kezra Venn, I’d have set my apprentice to throwing gravel at your bedroom window tonight.”
“We didn’t bring sledges, Master Corba,” Kezra said with a faint smile. She wiped sweat and clay dust from her forehead with her sleeve. “We brought cold chisels and a canvas sling.”
