The city was set on a high plateau, dominating a river basin. The heart of it was a raised platform on which sat temples, courtyards, the houses of the very rich – and monuments, gigantic stone thrones and carved heads as tall as she was, their ancient faces eroded and pitted. The big faces made the twins cry. The city had its own deep history; it had been the capital of an empire that, according to its own legend, had been the first civilisation west of the great ocean, and would also have been the first to have fallen long ago if not for links with Northland across the sea. Well, in the years since, the Empire of the Jaguar had waxed and waned. This age had seen a fragmentation of states under the pressure of drought and heat, and there had been endless petty, wearing wars. The Altar was much reduced from its eerie pomp. But you wouldn’t know it from the way the rulers and the rich paraded around the city in their finely woven skirts, and their upper bodies adorned with bangles, necklaces, pendants, and big mirrors of polished stone. And they were deformed, their heads misshapen from their skulls being bound up when they were infants, and grooves worn into their teeth. Xipuhl said this was part of a revival of ancient customs; facing an uncertain future, the people of the Altar were reaching back to a more secure past.

Now, in any event, Sabela was seeing her last of it.

The three women, with their children and baggage, were loaded onto a couple of carts driven by Xipuhl’s servants. As they rolled out of the city towards the coast, they were not alone; Sabela saw a steady trickle of vehicles, and foot traffic too, heading out to greet the first ships to be seen from across the ocean all year.

Xipuhl had sent servants ahead to rent a small property on the edge of the coastal town, and there they spent a restless night. Sabela’s twins had trouble sleeping this close to the sea; they had been born into the clear, dry, thin air of the mountains, and sometimes they found the clinging humidity of the lowlands unbearable. In the early morning they gathered by the harbour, watching the dawn gathering over the ocean, waiting for their first glimpse of the ships. The children quickly got bored. Walks In Mist had brought her Northland chess set, and Sabela’s twins settled down to a game.

And then the ships emerged from a bank of mist, tall shadows on the horizon. There was a ripple of applause from the waiting people.

‘Here they come,’ murmured Walks In Mist. ‘But why now? Too late for the midsummer. I suppose they could have been delayed – difficulties with the journey, with ice on the sea . . .’