As they spoke Thaxa discreetly refilled their teacups. At least you couldn’t accuse his family of consuming more than their fair share. One reason he hosted these meetings was as a kind of polite, unspoken penance for the absence of Rina and the children. Everybody knew they had gone off down south, and had sneaked away in secret. You could see it as a betrayal, or as an example of devotion to a wider cause, to leave your home and risk the unknown to reduce the pressure on the Wall’s resources, depending on how generous you felt. But as Rina wasn’t the only one to have fled, the social disgrace he had feared had never materialised, not quite. And people had more to worry about than that.

‘In fact,’ Xree was saying, ‘there are more people showing up all the time, from Northland and beyond, even Gairans, even Albians.’

‘Turn them away,’ Ayto snapped. That won him a few glances of distaste.

‘We try,’ Ywa said. ‘But there are always more. And some have a claim to be let in – some of them have relatives in the Wall. Those we do turn away may simply become bandits and even more of a problem than if we had fed them in the first place.

‘Then there’s the issue of the food itself. There’s more of your salted fish, Crimm, and other comestibles in the storehouses than you might think,’ she said softly. ‘But even so, not enough.’

‘How much “not enough”?’

Xree said, ‘Unless we cut the ration again we’ll run out before the midwinter solstice.’

Crimm nodded. ‘Then you must cut the ration.’

Ywa said, ‘I’ve asked Ontin and the other doctors to come up with recommendations on the absolute minimum people can survive on. We must get as many through the winter as possible, and hope that the spring is kinder.’

Ayto said, ‘And if it isn’t? No, forget that. If we don’t survive the winter it won’t matter. You may have to go further.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If there’s not enough to go round, stop the ration altogether for some. The very sick, the already dying.’

There was a shocked silence, at another blunt remark from the fisherman.

‘People won’t stand for it,’ Thaxa said instinctively.

‘They may have to.’

‘We have considered such options,’ Ywa said grimly. ‘Believe me. But even if we could make it acceptable – how do you choose, fisherman? Do you cut out everybody over fifty, say? Or the very young, on the argument that their mothers can always have more babies?’

Xree said smoothly, ‘In any event, food is only one problem. There’s also the question of heating . . .’