She emerged from the house into a soft, early evening light. For once the sky was clear, and the sunset was spectacular. The remarkable skies had, for the last year, been a small consolation for the disruption the world had suffered, a bit of beauty amid the misery. But she suspected that Pyxeas would say that even this was merely a symptom of the world’s agony; she was looking at the sun’s light reflecting off the dust that had once been all the farmland in North Africa, now dried out and blown high in the air.

The maid said that when the master died she would have the corpse cremated, send the ashes to Rina, shut up the house. Rina nodded, thanked the woman – wondering vaguely what would become of her when Jexami was gone – and set off back across the city to Barmocar’s household.

Where Barmocar himself was waiting anxiously for her. For a second time that day she had been summoned.

67

Carthalo, one of the two suffetes, had asked to see her. They would meet at an expensive cemetery on the flank of the Byrsa.

‘I will accompany you,’ said Barmocar.

‘I am summoned by the suffetes,’ she said, unbelieving. ‘Me. A runaway servant. A middle-aged Northlander with whip burns on her back and my fingers worn out from working your wife’s slit—’

‘My wife is dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘Two days ago.’

‘The plague?’

‘Of course the plague. And now she lies out in the cemetery. You will see. That is why we are going there.’

‘Anterastilis was a foolish, indulgent woman, who used me, and others, cruelly. But nobody in this world deserves to die, certainly not of the blood plague. Still – she is gone. Why should I help you, who took advantage of my weakness and vulnerability?’

‘I brought you to Carthage,’ he snapped with a trace of his old anger. ‘I took you in when no other would. Times were already hard, or have you forgotten that?’ He made a visible effort to regain control; he seemed to be under huge stress. ‘It is not me who asks for your help. You and your uncle, actually.’

‘Pyxeas?’

‘He is to attend too. It is important, Rina. Will you attend or not?’

The next morning Pyxeas himself came to the house, with Avatak, his Coldlander companion. Rina was overjoyed; it was the first time she had seen her uncle since his arrival at Carthage. But Pyxeas was silent, withdrawn, and seemed much older than she remembered, drained by his journey. He had trouble talking too; there were bloody gaps in the teeth of his lower jaw. Yet he was gathering his strength for whatever was to come today, she saw.

The four of them, Barmocar, Rina, Pyxeas and his boy, together with a servant, were loaded onto a carriage drawn by a single elderly horse, and they crossed the city.