He ducked into the nearest shelter, a wide, heavy awning over one of the market stalls. It was no warmer, but it was a relief to have the snow stop falling on his head and trickling down his neck. The awning was wide enough to shelter quite a number of people, and the traders under here were selling some kind of art, he saw, paintings set on stands. He recognised one of them, the kid Nelo, gawky brother of a cuter sister who had, briefly, been assigned to provide Mago with some company during the summer.

Mago wasn’t alone in seeking shelter. Some of those hapless nestspills were filtering in now, old and young, a skinny mother carrying a scrawny baby, people with faces and clothes the colour of the dirt they had been sitting in. One trader, a fat Northlander in a rich fur cloak, tried to block their way. Nelo, the kid, stepped forward, had a quiet word and the man stood aside. A couple of the traders pulled a sheet across the open stall front to keep out the snow. Somebody lit a lamp. The nestspills started to settle to the muddy ground, squatting in little groups. They seemed to be used to squatting, waiting on events, on somebody noticing them and helping them.

The awning above all their heads bulged and creaked softly. A mass of snow was evidently gathering there already.

Mago walked up to Nelo. ‘Please don’t turn me out in the snow,’ he said in a mock whine, using his limited Northlander.

Nelo looked at him, and walked back to his paintings. ‘You’re funny,’ he said in toneless Greek.

‘I’m just teasing you. You did a good turn back there. Of course if that sister of yours – Alxa? – ever fancies doing a Carthaginian a good turn—’

‘Shut up.’

‘All right, all right.’ Mago, trying not to shiver despite the cold that probed at his bare arms and scalp, inspected the paintings. They were just a jumble to him, figures and shapes of all sizes and positions. He squinted at the nearest canvas. ‘Ouch.’

‘What?’

‘You’re the artist, are you?’

‘Of some of them,’ said Nelo, withdrawn, defensive.

‘Let me guess which. This one, with the great big pig and the little tiny horse?’

‘You’ve no idea what you’re looking at, have you? What do you know about art?’

Mago shrugged. ‘I like a nice drinking cup. Do you do drinking cups? With a few warriors going at it, and maidens fiddling with each other’s titties. That’s real art. Chuck in a few swords and lutes and laurels and so forth—’

Nelo snorted. ‘This is art, you Carthaginian ox. A new kind of art, neither the abstraction of our own tradition nor the simple representation of you easterners. Look again. That’s not a “little horse”. It’s further away – further from you, the viewer, than the animals in the foreground. And see the lines of the barn – the edges of the road, the way they converge . . . It’s a new technique called look-deep. Pioneered by Pythagorean scholars here.’