They set Pyxeas down in the mouth of the cave so he could see the village, the sea, and laid blankets over his shoulders. Soon he had a cup of nettle tea in his hands, and Avatak could smell a rich fish soup warming up. ‘So this is the new Etxelur,’ the scholar murmured. ‘If it wasn’t for bad engineering in the past I suppose it couldn’t exist at all.’

‘Bad engineering, scholar?’

He picked at the coarse growstone surface under the blanket. ‘Look at this stuff. We could never properly maintain the Wall’s seaward face, you know. Oh, we would try, we would lower caissons to work at the face, but only for the shallowest sections. For the rest we would just dump growstone in great sacks down the face and let it harden. And in turn, of course, the sea steadily wore away at the face, exposing the interior. Strange to think this growstone might be a thousand years old – and hidden from the light until quite recently.

‘But if not for that shoddy work, all that growstone thrown down the Wall’s face, more in hope than judgement, this rough shore would not even exist. And these survivors would not be living on the ruins of the past. Ah! My dear.’ Muka brought him a bowl of hot fish soup. ‘A feast fit for the Great Khan himself. But, are you well? I think your nose is bleeding . . .’

Crimm tapped Avatak on the shoulder and beckoned. ‘Coldlander. Come. Walk with me, please. Come see how we live. Bring your soup.’

He led Avatak down towards the sea. The growstone and the sea ice were bloodstained, and haunches of seal meat lay around, frosted with ice. Wooden frames stood in rows; fish were drying on the racks, and one big seal carcass. People stared as they went by, especially the children in their furs, who followed Avatak.

‘Don’t mind them,’ Crimm said. ‘We aren’t used to strangers any more. Odd to think that Etxelur was the navel of the world, just a few years ago. We held a Giving this year, of sorts, for old times’ sake. Nobody came save a few of those bastards from the Manufactory, but we drove them off with stones.’

In the blue sky the moon hung over the sea, almost full, startlingly bright. Avatak noticed that nobody was looking at the moon; they turned their heads, cupped hands over their eyes.

Crimm saw he observed this. ‘The moon is our goddess of death. She is bright in the sky, these days and nights.’

‘Pyxeas would say, because she shines in the reflected light of the ice lying on the earth.’

Crimm shrugged. ‘Perhaps. She exults even so. Avatak, I remembered you were travelling with uncle Pyxeas, and I always hoped you would return. All the Coldlanders who were here fled years ago, before we started starving. I’m sure they’re prospering . . .’