The Scale and Scrap

The Kilns' Old Work weighing-yard, where broken temple-bronze comes in by the sackful and goes out again as either coin, forge-stock, or — rarely, quietly — a real find worth more than the whole yard.

A scale bolted to a post, three trestle tables, and Quennit Marsh's cough, which she'll tell you came from ten years of vault-dust and no one's ever managed to argue her out of it (verdigris lung, the healers call it now — she just calls it the job). She weighs scrap by the pound and workings by the piece, buys back expedition kit from salvors coming down off a bad trip, and keeps a locked back room for the one item in twenty that isn't scrap at all. She'll haggle over a farthing on principle and never once haggles on the cough.