The heavy oak door of the main kiln house closed with a solid, echoing thud, leaving Maud Venn standing in the warm, soot-stained gloom of the firing bay. Outside in the lane, two heavy iron-tipped spears clattered against the stone doorframe as Lieutenant Vorn’s sentries took up their posts, their boots pacing a restless, rhythmic beat across the gravel.
Inside the cavernous brick building, the air was hot and thick with the dry, stone scent of baking terracotta and burning oak cordwood. At the center of the chamber stood the great updraft kiln. A massive, vaulted brick structure twelve paces long. Its lower firebox glowed with a fierce, pulsating orange heat that cast dancing shadows across the whitewashed walls. Along the side aisles, stacks of seasoned fuel wood reached to the roof timbers, dry as tinder from the streaming fire heat.
Maud stood motionless for a moment, listening to the muffled voices of the soldiers outside. She didn’t pace the floor, nor did she wring her hands. Instead, her eyes traveled step by step across the familiar tools of her life’s work. The long iron ash-scrapers hanging from their forge hooks, the stacks of heat-proof firebricks, the rows of greenware jars drying upon the upper racks, and the heavy, grease-rubbed oak levers of the draft dampers.
