Yagharek could not be sure where the next noise came from, but he thought the two crawling slake-moths hissed at their flying sibling, in disapproval or warning.

There was an answering hum. In the stillness of the Glasshouse curfew, the clicking of mechanized gears from the top of the temple was easily heard.

Yagharek was quite still.

A light burst forth from the top of the pyramid, a blazing white ray, so sharp and defined it seemed almost solid. It beamed from the lens of the strange machine.

Yagharek stared through his mirrored glasses. In the faint ambience radiating backwards from the glaring searchlight he could see a crew of cactacae elders stationed behind it, each frantically adjusting some dial, some valve, one grasping two enormous handles that jutted from the back of the light-emitting engine. He swivelled and twisted the thing, directing its luminous shaft.

The light glared savagely onto a random patch of the dome’s glass, then was wrested by its wielder into another position, swung randomly for a moment, then pinioned the impatient slake-moth as it reached the broken panes.

It turned its horned eyesockets to the light. The monstrous creature hissed.

Yagharek heard shouts from the cactus people on the ziggurat, a half-familiar tongue. It was an alloy, a bastard hybrid, mostly words he had last heard in Shankell, alongside New Crobuzon Ragamoll and other influences he did not recognize at all. As a gladiator in the desert city, he had learnt some of the language of his mostly cactus bookmakers. The formulations he heard now were bizarre, centuries out of date and corrupted with alien dialects, but still almost comprehensible to him.

“. . . there!” he heard, and something about light. Then as the slake-moth dropped away again from the glass to extricate itself from the torch, he heard, very clearly, “It’s coming!”

The slake-moth had easily fallen away and out of the reach of the enormous torch. Its beam oscillated wildly like a madman’s lighthouse as the cactacae fought to point it in the right direction. Desperately they swung it over the streets, up at the roof of the dome.

The other two moths remained unseen, flattening themselves against the glass.

There was a shouted discussion from below.

“. . . ready . . . sky . . .” he made out, then some word that sounded like the Shankell words for “sun” and “spear” run together. Someone shouted out to take care, and said something about the sunspear and the home: too far, they shouted, too far.

There was a barked order from the cactus directly behind the vast torch, and his team adjusted their motions obscurely. The leader demanded “limits,” of what Yagharek could not understand.

As the light lurched wildly, it found its target again, momentarily. For a moment, the tangled presence of the slake-moth sent a ghastly shadow across the inside of the dome.

“Ready?” shouted the leader, and there was a confirming chorus.