Bronze Summer

24

It did not grow dark that midsummer night in Northland, though the light sank to a deep grey-blue. A phenomenon of this strange northern place, Qirum supposed. Yet to the west there was a deeper darkness, a smear of black as if a pot of pitch had been spilled. Qirum fancied he could see a spark of fire at the heart of it, right on the horizon, or beyond it.

He saw all this from the Wall, its roof, a walkway studded with huge stone slabs and the tremendous carved heads of dead Annids. Tonight beacons burned bright, all along the Wall’s length to left and right as far as he could see. Senior members of all Northland’s great Houses were up here, from the Annids to the lowly Beetles, still in their Giving finery. All of them anxiously looked west, watching the sea. And on the breast of that ocean were more lights, sparks on blue-black infinity. Boats with lanterns and beacons of their own.

‘You could not sleep.’

He turned. Kilushepa stood by him, dressed in a long, warm cloak, her hand on her belly. ‘Nor you, it seems,’ he said.

‘Too much commotion. Shouting, running, all along the Wall.’

‘It is the great event in the ocean.’ He pointed to the spreading black cloud. ‘The Annids think it is a mountain of fire, far off to the west. On an island called Kirike’s Land.’

‘If it is so far away, why are the Northlanders so alarmed?’

‘Because great events on land can cause similarly great calamities at sea,’ Qirum said. ‘This is as Milaqa explained it to me. There will be a ripple, if you will. But a ripple that might challenge all these people have built. Great Seas, they call them; there have been two, as far as I know. These events are embedded deep in their memories, their culture, their sense of who they are. And so they have their beacons, and the lightships out to sea. If the wave comes the distant ships will flash a warning back to the land.’

She frowned. ‘Will their Wall not keep out the wave?’

‘One would hope so. But even if not they have fallback plans. They open watercourses, abandon the lower ground — make ready to soak up the flood.’

‘I suppose we would have to flee.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I just found out I’m pregnant.’

He turned to her, astonished. For a heartbeat he wondered if it could be his — but no, they had always been careful about that, she had taken him in her mouth or her anus, or they had used her protective calfskin sheathes. A brat forced on her by some faceless Hatti soldier, then. And she was the Tawananna!

He laughed.

She glared out to sea.

The breeze shifted, coming from the west, and he thought he could smell burning.