Kiln Cloth

The buyer is an emberkin glassblower whose upper loft is filled with heavy weaving looms. He holds a corner of the cloth directly in a candle flame, and the fabric doesn't even scorch. "Fireproof slag-fiber cloth," he explains. "We weave it ourselves for furnace crews, and the Guild fines us because their licensed cloth costs three times as much. Worse, last month an Excise patrol confiscated our steel heddle-bar—without it, our looms can't weave another yard."

He leads you up to the weaving loft, where twelve heavy looms stand idle with slack threads and a stack of finished fireproof aprons sits by the door. "Recover our steel heddle-bar from the Excise seizure hulk, and we'll line your ship's bulkheads with fireproof cloth," he offers. "Or if you don't want to risk boarding an Excise hulk, smuggle this last stack of finished kiln-aprons to the foundry furnace crews for us."

The Excise seizure hulk is a decommissioned coal barge anchored off the point, heaped to the rails with confiscated goods under rain-soaked tarpaulins. An armed Excise cutter is moored alongside while her crew eats dinner below deck.

At the main foundry works, the shift boss distributes the fireproof aprons straight down the furnace line to burn-scarred stokers. "We don't earn enough to pay what these are truly worth, captain," she tells you, "but we can pass the hat for seventy silver, or give you our foundry's brass fire-alarm bell plus thirty silver."

Within an hour of bolting the steel heddle-bar back in place, the master loom is clattering at full speed. The glassblower slices off the first wide bolt of fireproof slag-cloth and holds it out to you. "Do you want us to fireproof your ship's bulkheads with this, captain, or would you rather take ninety silver from our first week's sales?"