The suburb beyond the outer walls was a city in itself, but much more disorderly, crowded, with a pall of greasy smoke rising from a hundred fires. There was a steady stream of traffic through the gates, of pedestrians, horse riders, and carts drawn by bullocks and horses. Avatak noticed a line of people, men, women and children, all of them shabby-looking, strung out along the length of the outer wall, leading away from the gate. They were waiting for something handed out at the gate itself by a team of soldiers; more tough-looking troops patrolled the line, weapons ready, prepared for any trouble.

Uzzia, evidently feeling more at home in this bustling market town, plunged into its narrow alleys. The houses here were of mud or sod bricks, and roofed by turf or wood slats. There was business being done everywhere, in inns, stores selling food or clothes or spices or precious goods, and brothels with exotic whores, both female and male, beckoning from doorways. Uzzia soon found a tremendous central marketplace, crowded with stalls. Avatak was baffled by the masses of porcelain, silks, plums, watermelons, and a blizzard of paper money. But the marketplace backed onto a stockyard where animals, distressed and calling out, were being lined up in huge numbers for slaughter in the open air. Corpses dangled from hooks, and the cobbles were sticky with old blood. Avatak had gutted seals and flensed walruses; he was far from squeamish. But the sheer scale of this slaughter, however necessary to feed the hungry city, repelled him.

With a word to Uzzia, he turned away and began to walk back towards the gate. He was curious about the line of people at the wall. When he came to the line he backtracked, trying to find the end, but the line stretched all the way to the corner of the wall’s rectangular layout, and back down the next side, and on out of his sight. There must be thousands of people in this one line, perhaps tens of thousands.

He walked back along the line towards its head. Every so often the waiting horde would move forward in a great rippling movement that spread along the line, and people jostled, making sure their neighbours didn’t try to jump a space. There were always fights somewhere, and soldiers would leap in with clubs raised to sort it out. Whatever it was these people were waiting for, they needed it badly.

The line ended at a simple table, manned by two officers and heavily guarded by a circle of troops. They backed onto a kind of storehouse built into the wall itself. The soldiers made a note of each supplicant’s name on a paper scroll, and then a bundle was handed over, wrapped in paper. The supplicant would hurry away with nods of obeisance and gratitude.

‘Bread,’ Uzzia murmured in his ear.

Avatak glanced around, surprised she’d found him. ‘Bread? That’s all?’