He was treating her like a whore. She was an Annid of Northland, and this Carthaginian animal was treating her like a whore. She would not allow her humiliation to show. She would not.
‘Knowledge, then,’ she said now.
‘Knowledge?’
‘It is our knowledge above all that has enabled Northland to prosper across the centuries, since the days of Pythagoras, and for millennia even before that. I could put this at your disposal — endow a library perhaps, to the greater glory of Carthage. A library of world renown in your own distinguished name. .’
‘A bank of dusty old scrolls? I don’t think so. I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll tell you what you can bring to me, what will make it worth my while hauling your skinny backside to Carthage. You and your equally worthless children.’
She had never before been spoken to this way. ‘Tell me.’
‘The bones of the Virgin.’
‘Who?’
‘The Mother of the Hatti god-man. What’s His name? Jesus, that’s it.’
She frowned. ‘Why would you want that? Carthage does not follow Jesus.’
‘But our enemies do. The Hatti. And if I have what they want, that gives me power over them. Do you see? Just as now I have power over you.’
She shook her head. ‘The reliquary of the Virgin — I have no access. And the bones aren’t mine to give.’
‘Find a way. Bring me the relics. Or, and you know it as well as I do, by this time next year your own bones will be lying in that Wall. Probably having been gnawed by your own starving children.’
Anterastilis laughed prettily, as if he had made a polite witticism.
Rina took a breath, and looked from one to the other. ‘We have an arrangement, then.’
‘Not quite. One more thing.’ Again he leaned closer, and she could smell fish sauce on his breath. ‘You aren’t the only craven Northlander trying to escape. You’re not the only one selling off the treasures of millennia, in a desperate attempt to save her children from the ice.’
She had no idea if that was true. But if she was keeping such a secret, why not others?
‘This is the end of Northland’s long and manipulative history — the end of your smugness and arrogance. And it ends like this. You have come here to beg, for all you deny it. I want to hear you say it.’
She hesitated for one heartbeat, composing herself, ensuring her voice would be strong. ‘Then I beg. I beg you to save me and my children, Barmocar.’
He laughed, slapped his thigh, and sat back. ‘Very good. If you have the relics before we leave, you come with us. If not, you stay. You can show yourself out.’ He turned away from her, and began to speak to his wife in his own thick tongue.
She stood and left the apartment, unescorted. She thought of Pyxeas. She had taken his advice in the end, she was fleeing to the south, just as he had recommended. But now she wished with all her heart she had taken her children with her when she had escorted him last year to Hantilios — and wished she had never been foolish enough to come back.
25
It had seemed a long winter, so far from home. But at last the morning came when Pyxeas’ party was to leave Akka, and resume the journey east to Cathay.
Akka was a spacious, handsome town of wide straight streets and stout sandstone buildings, on the easternmost shore of the Middle Sea. Uzzia had brought them here across the ocean from Hantilios when the winter relented, and she had spent the months since scouring the city’s tiny, crowded harbour for berths on a ship going east. The ocean had its own hazards, Uzzia told them, but a journey by sea was a much more feasible way for Pyxeas to travel to far Cathay, rather than to jolt his bones overland. But there were no berths to be had; the whole world was going through a tremendous convulsion, and there were too many precious cargoes to be shipped from one place to another to make room for an old man. So overland it would be, they had reluctantly decided in the end.
Even Pyxeas had agreed that the journey could not be attempted before the winter was done, but he had spent the whole season fretting with impatience, even while he buried himself in his studies. Avatak suspected he had seen nothing of this place — this beautiful town with the rich Arab-Muslim culture of its latest owners laid over a deep history, all of it utterly unlike anything Avatak had encountered before. Avatak, though, had immersed himself. Now, this early morning, Avatak stood beside the clean stone wall of one of the many mosques that dominated the city. The sun was still low, barely risen over the eastern horizon, but already he could feel its heat on his face and bare arms, a promise of noon.
And here was Uzzia, walking up to him, wearing her quilted coat, a heavy pack on her back, her whip in her hand. There was a strength, a stillness about her, Avatak had thought since he’d got to know her, stillness and solidity. Which was reassuring, since he was going to have to rely on her to get him and Pyxeas safely through the unknowable days to come.
She fell in beside him as they walked up the street towards the mustering point, where Pyxeas and their guide Jamil would be waiting for them. They passed a few folk in the street, a bent old woman who sprinkled water to lay the dust, a boy sweeping dirt from a gutter, a couple of young men who might have been Carthaginians staggering home from a long evening. Mostly, the city still slept.
‘You’re going to be sorry to leave, aren’t you?’ In the course of the winter her Northlander had grown more fluent, though Avatak could tell she was picking up Pyxeas’ own slightly clipped Etxelur intonation.
‘It’s not my place to be sorry. It’s my place to look after the scholar. To go where he needs to go, to keep him safe.’
‘Yes.’ Uzzia laughed. ‘As Rina made plain before she left us at Hantilios. My ears are still ringing, and I was in the next room. That’s a formidable woman, and I would not wish to cross her. But still — you have feelings, you’re a human being, not a pack mule or a camel.’
‘What’s a camel?’
‘You’ll find out.’
They were passing the wall of a grand private residence, with an open doorway decorated with an intricately carved arch. Looking within, Avatak saw a courtyard centred on a pond above which a fountain bubbled. More archways supported by delicate columns led invitingly to shady rooms.
‘Beautiful,’ Uzzia said.
‘My home is a place of hard ice and the dark. It can be beautiful.’ He thought of the colours in the big sky at this time of year, the shades of the ice on the ocean, every tint of blue you could imagine. ‘But this, this is beauty of light and water.’
‘The Arabs are people of the desert. They cherish water. They have turned that sensibility into high art.’
‘Cathay will have its own wonders. So Pyxeas says. But-’
‘But you’re going to miss this,’ she said gently. ‘Who wouldn’t? And her. You’re going to miss her too.’
He felt the heat in his face. ‘You saw.’
She laughed. ‘You’re a man from the northern wastes, Avatak. In a city like this, you stand out. Yes, I saw. So did most of Akka, I think. What’s her name?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ he snapped.
‘I don’t mean to pry. She’s very beautiful.’
‘Nothing can come of it.’
‘Is she betrothed to another? She looks as if she belongs to a rich family.’
‘No. It is me. I am betrothed. There is a woman, at home. Her name is Uuna.’
‘Ah.’ She thought that over. ‘I never knew that.’
‘No, and you never imagined it, and nor did Pyxeas when he insisted I come away with him to study, for you both think me a boy.’
‘I don’t think that. In some cultures a man may take many wives. Or one may take lovers.’