‘Met him in . . .’A name Sabela couldn’t make out, so thick was her accent. ‘He came to trade, wool for potatoes. Deraj say,’ said the woman stubbornly. The boy nudged her, whispered something. The woman dug into her grimy coat and pulled out another scrap of paper, handed it to Sabela.

Sabela took it reluctantly; the woman wore skin gloves from which blackened fingernails protruded. When she opened the paper she saw it was a note in Deraj’s handwriting. ‘Why didn’t you give me this straight away?’ C’merr had no reply. Perhaps she was not used to written notes, Sabela thought. It hadn’t occurred to her.

The note was scribbled on a bit of reed parchment that was stained in one corner by what looked like spilled wine. Sabela’s heart sank. Her husband got drunk a lot these days. Much of his export business was with the Sky Wolf nations, to the north, and times were hard there – tremendous forest fires, drought, whole cities buried by dust storms, so the travellers said. And he had a way of making deals when drunk that he later regretted. But the note was in Deraj’s hand, undoubtedly. And it promised C’merr and her family refuge in Tiwanaku as long as they needed it.

She studied the woman, the grimy, tired face, the fixed eyes. Why would he do this? How could a woman like C’merr have possibly bought refuge from a man like Deraj?

‘You’d better come with me,’ she said. ‘We’ll find Deraj and sort this out.’

The nestspills goggled as they walked through Tiwanaku.

Today the city was as busy as ever, with crowds of reed boats working the lake waters beyond the jetties, the streets jammed with street-sweepers and porters, bearers leading llamas laden with goods or drawing carts. A temple was being torn down, one of the grandest in the city. There was always building going on somewhere in Tiwanaku, a cycle of demolition and construction as the city endlessly renewed itself to attract the next season’s pilgrims, who came to worship the God of Light in his citadel in the sky. If anything the pace of life here had got more frantic in the last few years – and of course the place was ever more crowded with nestspills. Sabela sometimes thought it was like the frenzied last dances at the parties she used to go to when she was young, everybody working harder to squeeze out the last bit of enjoyment before the cold light of morning.