Palla said firmly, ‘It was Henti. Your wife wanted to spare you the chore.’
‘As I did,’ Zida growled, still holding Pimpira tight. ‘We’re here to help you, Kassu. Anyway, you’re back early.’
‘We’ve been setting up the March. There’s a baggage caravan you wouldn’t believe. . We’re being released in shifts so we can prepare our own families.’
‘Then go to Henti. I’ll finish up here.’ Again Zida tensed for the strike.
But Kassu grabbed the man’s arm, pushed him away. Pimpira, released, slumped to the ground. ‘No. Not this one.’
Palla said warningly, ‘Henti said you would be like this. Sentimental. Not able to do your duty by the Emergency Laws.’
‘Not this one.’
Zida said, ‘Look at his foot. He can’t walk, man. He can’t join the March.’
‘He’s with me. He’s — my nephew.’
Zida stared at him, then laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘My nephew, Zida. That’s what I’m telling you.’
Zida held up his hands. ‘Well, it’s up to you, priest! It’s your lot who announced the Emergency Laws. If you lie, if you help him hide a slave, it’s your crime.’
Kassu faced Palla. ‘You owe me your life. Now you owe me this.’
‘Is it worth it, Kassu?’ Palla asked evenly. ‘For one lame slave boy?’
‘You tell me. You’re the priest.’
Palla stared at Pimpira, and shrugged. ‘Fine. It’s your crime. I will say nothing. Are we even now?’
‘Oh, no,’ Kassu snapped. ‘Never that.’
Palla turned and walked away towards the house.
Zida turned on Kassu. ‘You fool. You idiot. You walnut-brained sack of-’
‘Enough.’
Zida pointed after the priest. ‘That man is your worst enemy. He tried to take your wife. And you spared his life! Whoever forgave a man for doing that? And now you’ve given him a weapon to hold over you. And for what?’ He swung a kick at Pimpira’s good leg, and the boy twisted on the cold ground. ‘A slave boy who’s neither use nor decoration. What’s wrong with you, Kassu?’
Kassu had no more to say. He walked after the priest.
Zida stared at him, muttering under his breath. ‘And you.’ He turned on Pimpira, who cowered. ‘Get back in that pit, nephew, and stay there until I’m gone.’
On hands and knees Pimpira scrambled over the broken earth.
29
The Second Year of the Longwinter: Midsummer Solstice
Barmocar insisted on leaving Etxelur before the midsummer Giving.
Rina knew the Carthaginian hadn’t done this just out of spite for her. He and his colleagues and agents had spent much of the winter planning the trek to Carthage; the earlier in the year they started out on this long journey the better chance they had of completing it before the weather closed in again. In fact, Barmocar told Rina, he would have left even earlier if Northland’s dismal non-spring had allowed it.
But the midsummer Giving was the high point of the year for all of Northland, when the people came together before the Wall, under the guidance of their Annids and the priest-philosophers of the House of Wolves. It seemed a dreadful betrayal for Rina to prepare for such an event with the other Annids, while all the time she intended to abandon Northland herself — and while she quietly planned to steal the bones of the Mother of Jesus from their thousand-year-old sarcophagus deep in the fabric of the Wall. She felt the pricking of what a priest of Jesus would, she knew, call her conscience. But it had to be done.
No, Barmocar wouldn’t plan the timing of his journey just to spite her. She wasn’t important enough even for that, she suspected.
A day after Barmocar and his party had left Etxelur with great pomp, Rina made her own furtive departure.
She collected her bewildered children, took them to the Embassies District of the Wall, and told them she had booked passage on an early morning freight caravan running south from here to the shore of the Moon Sea, where they would join Barmocar’s group. Thaxa was here too, to say his own tearful goodbyes. She’d given the twins no advance warning, so they had no chance of breaking the secret — or of escaping her clutches on the day.
Naturally Alxa and Nelo didn’t want to go. Now sixteen, the twins had their own friends, their own ambitions, their own nascent place in Etxelur society. It had been Alxa who had pressed her mother to take Pyxeas’ dire warnings seriously in the first place, but she was unhappy at abandoning her home, her family. As for Nelo, he had his art, his friends in the school of look-deep experimental artists, the scraps of money he was making from selling his work in the markets. It took all that was left of Rina’s authority as a mother to force him to come away. ‘Carthage is one of the world’s greatest cities, though it may not be Etxelur. There will be lovers of art, there will be Carthaginians who will buy your work!’ Even then she had to compromise by allowing him to bring a stack of his sketchbooks and canvases. The arguments were heated, distressing, predictable. But she would not give way, and Thaxa backed her up. At last she got them both on the steam caravan, with a mound of luggage.
As the caravan made its cautious way south and west, locked together in a tiny passenger cabin, they took out their tensions and unhappiness on each other. The twins worked their way through their resentment, and were soon nagged by guilt at abandoning their friends, the rest of their family — even Thaxa, their father. It didn’t get any better when the caravan wound its way through the bank of low hills called the First Mother’s Ribs, and they lost sight at last of the tremendous world-spanning face of the Wall.
They were all in a poor state when they arrived at Alloc at the end of a long day’s travel, to be met by Barmocar and his party.
Alloc was a major port on the eastern shore of the Moon Sea. It was a hub for trading links with Albia; from here timber and furs brought down the peninsula’s great rivers were transported across Northland by roads and canals, and on a shiny new steam-caravan link to the south. Rina had been here many times on Water Council business before. But it had never been so cold, not at this time of year, so close to midsummer, with a nip in the air that felt like it promised a frost.
As hungry-looking porters unloaded their goods and heaped them up beside the track, Rina got her first look at the caravan Barmocar had spent the winter organising. It was a lot more impressive than the caravan they’d taken from the Wall, with a string of expansive and luxurious passenger cabins, and goods wagons with fuel for the engine and provisions for the long journey. Rina felt a stab of envy, remembering how she had crossed Northland on foot and horse-drawn carriages with Pyxeas last year — but that had been his choice.
As they gathered by the track Rina recognised some of Barmocar’s party from meetings and social gatherings at the Wall. There were more Carthaginians, nobles from the many small nations of Gaira and Ibera, even a party of Muslim Arabs who must be intending to continue their journey onwards from Carthage across North Africa, or perhaps by boat the length of the Middle Sea. All these dignitaries and their families and entourages had been trapped by the winter weather in Northland, like Barmocar himself. There was a group of soldiers too, tough-looking Carthaginian veterans in their long cloaks and boots and with their weapons strapped to their backs, here for the protection of the travellers, Rina assumed. As soldiers always did, they eyed the women in the group with a kind of lazy calculation.
Amid this churning polyglot crowd, with the caravan’s engine already venting steam, Rina and the twins stood uncertainly beside their heap of luggage. At last Barmocar himself approached them, trailed by Mago, his slab-of-muscle nephew, who leered at Alxa.
Rina bowed her head formally. ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’
Barmocar was wrapped in an expensive-looking cloak, confident, plump — he hadn’t gone hungry during Northland’s bleak winter — and he had an air of total command. He barely glanced at Rina. ‘You’re late.’