‘Not rich. He’s a scholar.’ He had used the Northlander word. He tried again, in Cathay, Mongol. He didn’t know the Persian. Maybe he could make them understand. Make them spare the old man, even if only through pity. ‘Not rich. His treasure is what he knows.’

The pirate slapped him again, almost routinely. ‘What treasure?’

‘Inside. It’s inside him—’

But the pirate grinned, and threw him down, and Avatak realised he had made a horrible mistake. ‘Ha! That old trick.’ The pirate called over his shoulder. Avatak recognised the words ‘tamarind’ and ‘brine’.

A third man came, carrying a filthy, heavy sack. Avatak’s captor threw this over to the man with Pyxeas.

The scholar lay unmoving on a heap of bloodied manuscripts. The pirate cradled Pyxeas’ neck and raised his shoulders, so that his head was tipped backward. Then he forced open the scholar’s injured mouth with his fingers, making Pyxeas moan with renewed pain, and held Pyxeas’ nose, and he poured a thick crimson liquid from the sack into the scholar’s mouth. Pyxeas gagged, choked and struggled feebly, but the pirate held him firmly – almost skilfully, Avatak saw, wondering, almost like a mother in a winter house with a wilful infant – and Pyxeas had no choice but to swallow, to take in great mouthfuls of the stuff. Then he convulsed and doubled over. With a bark he vomited out a mass of crimson fluid laced with half-chewed ship’s biscuits, a foul-smelling pool that spread out over the mess of papers under him. The pirate laughed and stood back from the pool, making a show of trying to keep his feet dry. Now there was a fouler smell, and the pirates laughed again. The man dragged at the old man’s breeches, pulling them down with a casual rip, and Avatak saw shit dribbling from between the scholar’s skinny buttocks. Soon both men were rummaging in the vomit and shit with their bare hands – looking for Pyxeas’ treasure, which they thought he had swallowed because of Avatak’s own foolish words. And, he saw, they would keep on doing this in their frustration until they had squeezed the old man dry of every drop of fluid in his body, and perhaps finish the job by slitting him open. All because of Avatak’s mistake.

He had one pouch the pirates hadn’t found, sewn into his shirt, under an armpit. In here he kept one of Uzzia’s gems – just one. When both pirates were distracted, their backs turned contemptuously to him, he dug his fingers into the pouch, pulled out the jewel and swallowed it. Then he called out, ‘Me. Not him. In me. He made me swallow it.’

Immediately the pirates were on him. One of them punched him again, as if in greeting. ‘Swallow what?’

‘His gem,’ Avatak gasped. ‘The family treasure. He made me swear—’