The upper courtyard of the central Star tower was lit up by the blinding, unblinking glare of twelve high-output copper floodlights mounted to the granite low roof walls.
The light here was fully unlike the dim, smoky yellow animal fat flames of the tram kitchens. It was an intense, green-white blazing bright arc produced by vaporizing pure copper wire in high-pressure oxygen jets. The beams crisscrossed the courtyard cobbles in sharp, overlapping sharp-angled patterns, throwing shadows as hard and sharp as iron bars against the walls. The air was dry, scorching hot, and smelled of scorched ozone, acid fumes. The sweet, sickly reek of fried grease.
Dozens of guard families lived in rough timber lean-tos thrown up against the granite curtain wall. Women in threadbare wool shawls stirred kettles of turnip broth on small coal stoves, their faces gaunt, their skin tinged with the unhealthy yellowish-green pallor of people who had lived five winters beneath artificial copper light without seeing a ray of natural sun. Small children in patched trousers sat on bundles of straw. They watched Ivara with dull, hollow eyes, their fingers stained black from sorting coal nuts for the backup boilers.
They looked at the bound land-mapper not with hatred, but with the cold, defensive indifference of refugees who knew their survival was bought with stolen oil, and who were too tired to care who paid the invoice.
