She fell in beside him as they walked up the street towards the mustering point, where Pyxeas and their guide Jamil would be waiting for them. They passed a few folk in the street, a bent old woman who sprinkled water to lay the dust, a boy sweeping dirt from a gutter, a couple of young men who might have been Carthaginians staggering home from a long evening. Mostly, the city still slept.

‘You’re going to be sorry to leave, aren’t you?’ In the course of the winter her Northlander had grown more fluent, though Avatak could tell she was picking up Pyxeas’ own slightly clipped Etxelur intonation.

‘It’s not my place to be sorry. It’s my place to look after the scholar. To go where he needs to go, to keep him safe.’

‘Yes.’ Uzzia laughed. ‘As Rina made plain before she left us at Hantilios. My ears are still ringing, and I was in the next room. That’s a formidable woman, and I would not wish to cross her. But still – you have feelings, you’re a human being, not a pack mule or a camel.’

‘What’s a camel?’

‘You’ll find out.’

They were passing the wall of a grand private residence, with an open doorway decorated with an intricately carved arch. Looking within, Avatak saw a courtyard centred on a pond above which a fountain bubbled. More archways supported by delicate columns led invitingly to shady rooms.

‘Beautiful,’ Uzzia said.

‘My home is a place of hard ice and the dark. It can be beautiful.’ He thought of the colours in the big sky at this time of year, the shades of the ice on the ocean, every tint of blue you could imagine. ‘But this, this is beauty of light and water.’

‘The Arabs are people of the desert. They cherish water. They have turned that sensibility into high art.’

‘Cathay will have its own wonders. So Pyxeas says. But—’

‘But you’re going to miss this,’ she said gently. ‘Who wouldn’t? And her. You’re going to miss her too.’

He felt the heat in his face. ‘You saw.’

She laughed. ‘You’re a man from the northern wastes, Avatak. In a city like this, you stand out. Yes, I saw. So did most of Akka, I think. What’s her name?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ he snapped.

‘I don’t mean to pry. She’s very beautiful.’

‘Nothing can come of it.’

‘Is she betrothed to another? She looks as if she belongs to a rich family.’

‘No. It is me. I am betrothed. There is a woman, at home. Her name is Uuna.’

‘Ah.’ She thought that over. ‘I never knew that.’

‘No, and you never imagined it, and nor did Pyxeas when he insisted I come away with him to study, for you both think me a boy.’