But, nestspills or not, the crowd all responded with gasps and cheers when the show started: the tremendous banners unrolling down the face of the Wall, the fireworks filling the sky with dancing light. And then came the fire-drug eruptors themselves, suddenly thrust from their portals in the Wall’s upper face, a hundred of them shouting simultaneously. Smoke belched and shot flew, gleaming red-hot, to fall in empty spaces beyond the crowds.

While the Etxelur folk applauded and cheered, Nelo watched the princes, who were stunned by the display of the mighty weapons. Only Northland, of the western countries, had the secret of the fire drug from Cathay. ‘Look at them, those loudmouths, Mago and Arnuwanda. They won’t be bragging about the might of their cattle-folk armies now.’

Their mother came pushing through the crowd. ‘There you two are,’ Rina snapped. ‘Your great-uncle’s back. Dock West One Four. Go and help him. And ask him how he managed to be eleven hours late after three years away . . .’

7

The next morning Alxa and Nelo were summoned to the Hall of Annids for the formal Giving Bounty meeting. As apprentice members of the House of the Owl, they had to wear their formal uniforms, a black shift topped by a cloak quilted and stitched to look like the wings of the emblematic bird.

The setting was spectacular. The Hall of Annids, relocated and rebuilt extensively over the ages, was contained within the body of the Wall, just under the roof, and its great stained-glass ceiling was one of the wonders of the Etxelur District. Though the sunlight gleamed through the glass it wasn’t a particularly warm day – there hadn’t been a really warm day all summer – but the steam-pipe heating was running, and Alxa knew she was going to get seriously hot in this rig.

‘And it’s going to be as dull as a Hatti funeral,’ she moaned to Nelo, as they filed into the Hall behind their parents and other Northland dignitaries.

Nelo just laughed.

The session was already coming to order, if slowly, and Alxa and her twin sat with their parents behind their distant aunt Ywa. Ywa was Annid of Annids and the speaker of the Water Council, the semi-permanent body that governed Etxelur and Northland. Crimm was here, another uncle, the fisherman who had brought Uncle Pyxeas home from Coldland. Other members of the Council attended, along with senior members of other Houses: the priest-scholars, the masons who maintained the Wall, the water engineers who managed the drainage of the countryside beyond. Dignitaries from the Wall’s many Districts had gathered too, their gowns emblazoned with the numbers and symbols of their homes: Four East, Seventeen West. Only Great Etxelur itself had no east or west designation, no number; Etxelur was the centre, the zero. Before the stage, below the Northlanders, sat the guests in their parties: Carthaginians and Hatti and Muslims and Germans and Franks, even a few Albians, stern and silent. In all there were perhaps fifty people here in this great and ancient Hall. And as they waited for the session to begin, the foreigners, dignitaries in their own countries, showed signs of restlessness.