He had never been to a city before, and he was overwhelmed by the size of it, the buildings of smartly cut stone or shabby wattle and daub crammed in side by side on both banks of a languid river, and jammed in even more tightly on a central island. He walked through alleyways walled by shops and stalls and taverns, stepped over open drains running through the cobbles, and climbed rickety bridges to the central island, which was dominated by sprawling temples dedicated to the gods of the peoples who traded here, from the ancient forest gods of the Albians to the enigmatic Jesus Sharruma of the east. People rushed everywhere, or laboured in open-to-the-street manufactories, or noisily sold wares in the many marketplaces. Pyxeas said the name of this place came from what the people who had founded it called themselves, in their own tribal tongue; they were ‘The People Who Worked’ or ‘The Busy People’, and looking around their city Avatak could well believe it. The place was nothing like the orderly, rigidly laid out, sparsely populated communities of lower Northland, or indeed like the tiny fishing villages of Avatak’s homeland. His only comparison was with the crowded communities of the Wall itself. It was as if a District had been cut from that great structure and emptied out, a heap of stone and wriggling people. But the Wall, of course, would have utterly overwhelmed this cramped, smoky, shabby place.

And even here, far to the south of Northland, Avatak saw the mark of winter and the long drought: frosts every clear morning, the late potato crops struggling in the parched fields outside the city.

But Parisa, for all its detail and curiosities and wonders, was only the start of their true journey. Pyxeas warned him not to be too impressed. ‘You’ll forget this ant-hill when you see the mighty cities of Cathay.’

Rina, coldly disapproving of the whole enterprise, said nothing.

The day before their departure they walked down to the line terminus on the city’s eastern side, with hastily hired servants bringing their luggage after them.

Avatak had ridden steam caravans before. In Northland their gleaming iron trails criss-crossed the countryside, north to south, east to west. And then there was the famous Iron Way, the line that ran along the crest of the Wall itself, uniting the far-flung Districts of the Wall and their peoples.

But the great caravan to Hantilios was a different beast. Of course it was like a Northland steam caravan in its fundamentals; much of it was built and maintained by Northland engineers. But it was so much bigger than any caravan Avatak had ever seen. Not one but two engines would haul passenger carriages studded in a chain of rusty trucks full of Albian coal for fuel, and freight carriages, and specialised coaches that looked like engineering shops on wheels. Pyxeas said that though the southern Continent was a crowded and civilised place (‘Somewhat civilised,’ Rina corrected him), and though the Parisa–Hantilios line was a marvel of Northlander engineering, the technical support in these southern lands was sparse, and on the road the engineers would have to rely on their own resources.