The air over Haven-Hold tasted of dry copper filings and scorched clay.
Within forty-eight hours of the southern wind shift, the liquid silver column in Giles Croft’s brass barometer climbed to thirty-one inches.
The sky was an unbroken bowl of polished cobalt, devoid of clouds, moisture, or dust.
Beneath that static, glassy ceiling, the heat piled up like an unvented kiln.
Across the Ashen Basin and the Golden Valley, one million five hundred thousand acres of newly germinated winter wheat and barley were beginning to crisp at the edges.
Giles stood on the terrace of the central storehouse, his waistcoat unbuttoned against the ninety-degree heat.
He held a sight hygrometer toward the western horizon, checking the humidity gauge.
“Moisture in the air is down to nine percent,” Giles said, his voice flat with clean, steady care. “Surface evaporation rate is point four two inches per day.
