Yagharek’s skin was prickling with sweat. Wafts of woodsmoke blurred his vision. They rose from a hundred chimneys at all different heights, trickling gently into the sky and eddying in slow mushrooming gusts. A few hazy threads found their way up and seeped from the cracks and holes in the glass sky. But with the wind kept out and the sun magnified by the vaulted translucent bubble, there were no breezes or bluster to dissipate the fumes. The underside of the glass, Yagharek saw, was coated in greasy soot.

There was still more than an hour to sundown. Yagharek glanced to his left and saw that the orb of glass atop the dome seemed to be bursting with light. It was sucking up every scrap of the sun’s emissions, concentrating them and sending them vividly into every nook of the Glasshouse, filling it with unforgiving light and heat. He saw that the metal casing which held it was wired for power, with cables snaking down the insides of the dome and disappearing from sight.

The flat sand-garden at the top of the layered tower at the Glasshouse’s centre was covered in complex machinery. Exactly below the swollen nugget of clear glass was a huge lensed machine, with fat pipes snaking out into vats around it. A cactacae with a coloured sash polished its copper workings.

Yagharek remembered rumours he had heard in Shankell, stories about a heliochymical engine of immense thaumaturgic power. He looked carefully at the glowing contraption, but its purpose was quite opaque.

As he watched, Yagharek became conscious of the large number of armed posses that were evident. He narrowed his eyes. He was gazing down at them like some god, seeing every surface of the little cactus town in the fierce light of the glass globe. He could see almost all the rooftop gardens, and it seemed to him that on at least half, a group of three or four cactus were stationed. They sat or stood, their expressions unreadable at such a distance, but the massive, weighty rivebows they carried were unmistakable. Hatchets dangled from their belts, curved poleaxes glowed in the reddening light.

There were more of the little patrols beside stalls in the sprawling market, sitting alert on the lowest level of the central temple, and walking the streets with a deliberate step, rivebows cocked and ready.

Yagharek saw the looks that the armed guards received, the nervous salutations and the frequent skyward glances of the populace.

He did not think that this situation was normal.

Something was making the cactus people uneasy. They could be truculent and taciturn, in his experience, but the subdued air of menace was like nothing he had experienced in Shankell. Perhaps, he reflected, these cactacae were different, a more sombre breed than their southern siblings. But he felt his skin prickle. The air was fraught.