And, in the midsummer light, the Wall itself swept from east to west, horizon to horizon, separating land from sea, order from chaos, as it had done for more centuries than anyone save the most learned scholars could count. It was a thing of layers, built on an ancient core of rubble and mortar and ultimately, it was said, compacted seashells. In this age the landward face had been built up into an elaborate vertical city, with walls of thin-cut stone and tremendous stained-glass windows, all supported by sturdy flying buttresses. Looking along the roof of the Wall now, Rina could see how the character subtly changed from District to District: to the east the Springs with its taverns and inns, then the Market and the Manufactories, and to the west the more formal Holies and Embassies and Archive, the whole carefully laid out according to harmonic principles set out by the great sage Pythagoras. The upper roof itself was marked by ancient, heavily eroded blocks that were said to represent the visages of Annids and hero-gods of Northland’s past. Standing over these sculptures were modern light towers, ornately carved spires where lanterns burned to guide approaching shipping to the ports cut into the seaward face. And along the spine of the roof ran a new miracle, the Iron Way, a ribbon of rail, coal dumps and way stations that united all the Wall’s far-flung Districts. This great structure loomed over Old Etxelur and its hinterland to the south, while to the north the sea growled, grey and flat to the horizon, excluded by the Wall as it had been since the day of Ana, the woman become little mother who had first built the Wall.

And today the Wall’s roof was crowded with foreign dignitaries, here to welcome the party from Cathay, empire of the east. Aside from the women from the Western Continents, here were Hatti priest-warriors, their armour emblazoned with the crossed-palm-leaves motif of their god Jesus Sharruma whose bones were interred deep within the Wall. And Islamic princes, Egyptians perhaps, laden with gold, legs bare despite the chill breeze of this cold northern midsummer. And Carthaginian merchants, a splash of purple in their long robes. The Albians from their forested land stood apart from the rest, their heavy furs and carefully unwashed hair tokens of their adherence to the oldest gods of all. Everything about this moment was stage-managed – even the ranks in which the guests stood, so that no one had mortal enemies on both sides at once. These powerful men and women were dwarfed by the sheer scale of the landscape in which they stood, their talk diminished by the steady churning of the great pumps buried inside the Wall’s fabric. That, of course, was the whole point of bringing the dignitaries up here: to impress them with Northland’s power.

But the mood was difficult this summer. After yet another year of drought and famine across the Continent, this Giving was no formality, however joyous, but a hard-nosed negotiation over vital food supplies. The weather was odd too, for all Rina dismissed Uncle Pyxeas and his foolishness about worldwide weather changes. There was ground frost in the summer mornings, and a strange drabness in the land: this spring and summer you rarely saw a flower in bloom, or a butterfly.