The note filled her with contradictory emotions. She had not seen Jexami since he had first expelled her and her children. To know he was dying gave her a kind of vindication. Jexami had been the man who had turned her away in her darkest hour, her and her children. Now the blood plague had come for him: let him die. Yet such pettiness seemed meaningless in the context of the plague. It was said that in Carthage perhaps half had died – Jexami, walking with the dead, would soon have more company than among the living. What did past slights matter in such circumstances? And he was family. Of course she had to respond.

She begged time away, from Barmocar himself. She rarely saw Anterastilis these days; there were rumours in the household that she was ill. Barmocar consented with a curt nod, not speaking to her.

It was not far to walk to Jexami’s town house. He, like Barmocar, like the rest of Carthage’s privileged and wealthy, had abandoned his country property and flown to the safety of the city at the approach of the Hatti horde. The house, smaller than she had expected, seemed shut up, empty. This was a plague house, of course. Rina pulled on gloves, and a mask that covered all her face but the eyes, before she knocked on the door.

An elderly maid answered. There seemed to be nobody here but the maid, and her master.

In a small room, alone, Jexami lay on a thick pallet. The stench was terrible, and Rina went to push open a window. There was a water jug by his bed, empty. Rina summoned the maid to get it refilled. She knelt by the bed and took Jexami’s hand. She would not have recognised the burly, confident Northlander. His eyes were closed. He looked as if he had been drained, leaving only a sack of flesh. Only the swellings at his neck, thick and purple-black, looked healthy, ironically.

He stirred, his eyes fluttering open. When he tried to speak, his voice was a rustle like a moth’s wing. ‘Who is it?’ He spoke in Carthaginian.

‘It is me. Rina of Etxelur.’ She spoke in their own tongue, but she would not lift the mask to show her face. She squeezed his hand. ‘Your note reached me.’

‘Ah.’ His dry mouth opened with a pop. ‘Water—’

‘Coming.’

‘That villain Drubal did that for me, at least. My head of house. Brought me water. While robbing me of everything else. Now you have come, although I turned you out when you needed help. I regret – regret—’

‘What’s done is done. And I might have done the same. I, too, was arrogant and complacent in the days I lived in Etxelur.’

‘Your children? Twins?’