‘It will be informal, but under Ywa.’ He smiled. ‘The Annids like coming to me for their meetings, because I make good nettle tea. Stay the night. Forget all this, for a time. We’ll talk, eat, drink, get warm. I think you’ve deserved that much.’

The doctor smiled back thinly. ‘I’ll pass on the nettle tea, though. You have any Gairan ale? For that’s the best, you know.’

‘I’ll lay some in . . .’

But Ontin was looking over his shoulder, out of the window, at fresh flurries of snow that fell from a greying sky.

40

They made it back to the Wall, just, through the closing mouth of the latest blizzard.

Despite the storm, Thaxa couldn’t help but glance with pride at his shopfront as they struggled up to it. He was still well stocked with exotic linen and cloth, from Albian wild-cattle wool to Cathay silk and Carthaginian purple, even fine-spun wool from the llamas and alpacas of the lands across the Western Ocean – precious indeed, since trade across the ocean had been sundered by the icebergs. But nobody was shopping today, and the snow was heaped up in banks before the shopfront.

An archway on the left-hand side of the shop led to a courtyard laboriously swept clear of snow, surrounded by a cluster of buildings: a hall to the left, a pantry and kitchens to the right, and the main living quarters at the rear, with parlours, bedrooms, bathrooms, privies, and the household shrine to the little mothers. All this backed onto the Wall, which loomed over the shop. Thaxa’s property actually extended into the Wall itself. There were chambers cut into the growstone, much older, abandoned now, behind the elaborate structures that had been built onto the face – Thaxa himself wasn’t sure what there was back there.

Much of the property was shut up now, for the difficulty of heating it. But a light gleamed in the window of the largest parlour, and Thaxa led Ontin that way.

The parlour was deliciously warm, thanks to a roaring fire in the hearth. Thaxa and Ontin stripped off their heavy outdoor clothing in a small anteroom. They were later than Thaxa had planned. The fishermen were already here, some of the crew of the lost Sabet, Rina’s cousin Crimm, his partner Ayto – and Aranx, who was nursing a badly damaged hand. Ywa was here too, Annid of Annids, sitting close to the fire with Xree, another cousin of Rina and another Annid. Moerx was serving drinks, a hot nettle tea, a speciality of Thaxa’s – hot to banish the cold, and made of nettles as a kind of expression of sympathy for all the ordinary Northlanders who had nothing but nettles to keep them alive. Thaxa smiled easily at his guests. This was what he had always been best at: hospitality, a kind of talent for making people welcome, letting them relax.