The inside of Deacon Sun’s main stone greenhouse was an artificial, tropical humidity trap that smelled of steaming mulch, sweet rotting vegetation, and boiling sulfur water.
Outside, the alpine wind howling down from the Dragon’s Throat was freezing the morning dew into sharp needles of rime across the peach orchards. Inside the massive, hundred-pace box-shaped pavilion, the heat stood at a boiling hot thirty-two degrees, kept by thick copper radiator pipes that snaked beneath raised beds of imported fiery loam. Thousands of heavy glass panes, held together by lead framing, filtered the cold morning sunlight into a hazy, green-tinted twilight. Water drops dripped continuously from the iron rafters like a gentle, unending rain, hissing softly as it struck the hot stone heating trenches.
Lin Tao walked down the central flat stone slab aisle, his dark charcoal linen tunic unfastened at the collar against the oppressive moist heat.
Behind him, Tie Shan stepped with deliberate, heavy strides. The giant was carrying Deacon Sun by his silk collar like a scruffed cat, tossing the trembling official onto the damp stone path whenever Sun’s silk slippers dragged in the mud. Vanguard Commander Yue and the forty bound Flying Crane raiders were held outside under the guard of four hired field-hands who had right away surrendered their sickle-hooks the moment Tie Shan shattered the manor’s stone railing.
