With so much hungry water, the town had been forced upwards, into the walls of the valley. Beyond a rim of temples and monasteries, it rose in ever more secular tiers: seminaries and courts to start with, then the mansions of the great and good, a few noble hotels, and then everyone else, vanishing off into the jungle. Only the wildlife ignored this hierarchy, and was always pouring over the city. Each evening, millions of crows would appear in the rain trees round the lake, and everyone would flee. During the night, it was the turn of the leopards, who’d come down and drink from the hotel
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