The sky was as clear as crystal, and every now and again Kazan found himself glancing up at it, noting that the stars were organized in groups, noting that they cycled slowly, diagonally towards the horizon, so that there were now different stars behind the fortress from those that had been showing when the sun set.He had never seen a night like this. He had never looked at the stars except from beneath the constant haze of the city. Up on the hill, around the homes of the haughty, the sky might be as clear as it was here. But not over the Dyasthala, from which the fumes of a thousand coarse fires and the reek of decaying rubbish oozed forever upward, a miasma fit to foul even the stars.He had not yet made up his mind whether he liked the sky to be so naked over the world. But it was a new thing, and very interesting.Out there in the louring bulk of the fortress a few lights gleamed; one in particular, directly facing them, was the window of Prince Luth’s apartment. Almost anything might be going on there.
