“It also probably keeps the saltbush from getting eaten very often,” Toglo zev Pamdal said.

“Yes, but with a couple of exceptions,” Radnal said. “One is the humpless camel, which has its own ways of getting rid of excess salt. The other is my little friend the fat sand rat, although it prefers desert spurges, which are juicier.”

The Strongbrow woman looked around. “One of the things I expected to see when I came down here, both the first time and now, was lots of lizards and snakes and tortoises. I haven’t, and it puzzles me. I’d have thought the Bottomlands would be a perfect place for cold-blooded creatures to live.”

“If you look at dawn or dusk, Toglo zev, you’ll see plenty. But not in the heat of the day. Cold-blooded isn’t a good term for reptiles: they have a variable body temperature, not a constant one like birds or mammals. They warm themselves by basking, and cool down by staying out of the midday sun. If they didn’t, they’d cook.”

“I know just how they feel.” Evillia ran a hand through her thick dark hair. “You can stick eating tongs in me now, because I’m done all the way through.”

“It’s not so bad as that,” Radnal said. “I’m sure it’s under fifty hundredths, and it can get above fifty even here. And Trench Park doesn’t have any of the deepest parts of the Bottomlands. Down another couple of thousand cubits, the extreme temperatures go above sixty.”

The non-Tarteshans groaned. So did Toglo zev Pamdal and Peggol vez Menk. Tarteshem had a relatively mild climate; temperatures there went past forty hundredths only from late spring to early fall.

With morbid curiosity, Moblay Sopsirk’s son said, “What is the highest temperature ever recorded in the Bottomlands?”

“Just over sixty-six,” Radnal said. The tourists groaned again, louder.