Iron Winter

24

It was still snowing on the morning of Rina’s appointment with the Carthaginian noble Barmocar, in his apartment in Old Etxelur. She walked alone to the old town, with a hood over her head. She’d tried to keep this assignation secret. She was, after all, intending to betray her fellow Annids, cousin Ywa, and most of her family.

As she walked the snow fell steadily, as it had for days, not like the Autumn Blizzard and the storms that had followed, but a slow, unending, dispiriting fall that gathered relentlessly on the ground. Her cloak wrapped close, she passed workers laboriously clearing away yet another night’s fall from the paths. You could see where the new snow was piled up on top of the old, some of which, dirty and layered with muck, hadn’t melted since the early autumn.

When she reached Old Etxelur she looked back at the Wall, where people were working steadily to repair the damage the winter had done. The Hall of Annids was a huge wreck on its rows of supporting pillars, open to the air. All across the Wall, vast sections had been abandoned as people retreated to core areas and revived older, more robust systems, digging out chimneys, repairing ancient rainfall-trap water supply systems. This was spring! They had all waited for the equinox, and marked the end of winter with lavish celebrations — well, as lavish as possible. And all it had brought was yet more snow, yet more cold, as if the world itself had lost its way.

She turned, pulled her cloak tighter, and walked on.

In the anteroom to his lavish rented apartment in Old Etxelur, Barmocar received her graciously enough. His wife Anterastilis was at his side, the two of them resplendent in purple cloaks. The household was in turmoil, however, as the merchant prince’s servants packed everything up in preparation for the long trip back to Carthage, postponed for half a year since Barmocar had been caught by the early snow, like so many others.

He was clearly surprised when she asked him to dismiss his servants, and more surprised when she made her blunt request.

He actually laughed. ‘You’re serious. You want me to take you to Carthage. You, and who else?’

‘Just my children — the twins, Nelo and Alxa, you know them.’ This of course meant the abandonment of the rest of her extended family. Ywa herself was a distant cousin. But to take more would have been like pulling a thread; the whole tapestry would unravel. No, just herself and her children, for now. Not even Thaxa, her husband, would come, not this time; he would follow later, they had agreed. And if things changed — well, the future would have to take care of itself.

‘And when we get to Carthage, we will take you into our home.’ Anterastilis was a heavy, expensively coiffed woman. Her Northlander was stilted, but her tone was sharp as an icicle. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Rina squirmed; the woman was clearly enjoying this, and was going to make her suffer. ‘Perhaps initially. Give us somewhere we can live, at least at first. A start in your society. Work for my children, a place for me.’

Anterastilis actually laughed at her now. ‘“A place.” You could join the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four, perhaps!’

‘I can pay my way-’

‘Perhaps you can. Perhaps not.’ Barmocar turned to his wife. ‘My dear, you made a note of what this lady of Northland said to me at the Giving last year. Would you mind reading it back? You know the part I mean.’

Anterastilis took a piece of paper from a desk and unrolled it carefully. ‘“Good Prince Barmocar, I am confused. This tale of woe you recite — are you here to beg for bounty? Begging like these others, the Franks and Germans and the rest, these ‘poor rudimentary farmers’, as I have heard you describe them? And a bounty from us, whom I have heard you describe as ‘a thin godless smear of ignorance and incompetence on an undeveloped landscape’?’”

‘I recall what was said,’ Rina said precisely.

‘Then you recall mocking me. In front of the Giving gathering — in front of the whole world.’ He did not sound angry, merely analytical.

She didn’t bother to deny it.

‘And now you sit before me, begging me for shelter.’

‘I do not beg. I can pay you for your trouble. It will be worth your while.’

‘Are we to haggle, as if over a box of your disgusting salted fish? Tell me, then. Tell me what you have that I could possibly covet.’

‘My family owns extensive lands in Northland. Also properties in New Etxelur, and in the Wall. Many of these are in my own name. I could transfer-’

Again he laughed, cutting her off. ‘Madam, I am not the fool you take me for. You are abandoning Northland yourself! What value do you imagine your property has?’

‘Other forms of wealth, then. Gold. Silver.’ In fact she hadn’t expected him to take property, and had already been converting some of her holdings into portable wealth — at ruinous prices, for she wasn’t the only one with the same idea.

Now he nodded. ‘Well, that’s a start. You can discuss precise quantities with my clerk later.’ He leaned forward. ‘But the world is full of gold and silver, madam. What else can you offer me? Something special. Something unique.’ And, even though his wife sat right beside him, he allowed his gaze to wander over her body.

He was treating her like a whore. She was an Annid of Northland, and this Carthaginian animal was treating her like a whore. She would not allow her humiliation to show. She would not.

‘Knowledge, then,’ she said now.

‘Knowledge?’

‘It is our knowledge above all that has enabled Northland to prosper across the centuries, since the days of Pythagoras, and for millennia even before that. I could put this at your disposal — endow a library perhaps, to the greater glory of Carthage. A library of world renown in your own distinguished name. .’

‘A bank of dusty old scrolls? I don’t think so. I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll tell you what you can bring to me, what will make it worth my while hauling your skinny backside to Carthage. You and your equally worthless children.’

She had never before been spoken to this way. ‘Tell me.’

‘The bones of the Virgin.’

‘Who?’

‘The Mother of the Hatti god-man. What’s His name? Jesus, that’s it.’

She frowned. ‘Why would you want that? Carthage does not follow Jesus.’

‘But our enemies do. The Hatti. And if I have what they want, that gives me power over them. Do you see? Just as now I have power over you.’

She shook her head. ‘The reliquary of the Virgin — I have no access. And the bones aren’t mine to give.’

‘Find a way. Bring me the relics. Or, and you know it as well as I do, by this time next year your own bones will be lying in that Wall. Probably having been gnawed by your own starving children.’

Anterastilis laughed prettily, as if he had made a polite witticism.

Rina took a breath, and looked from one to the other. ‘We have an arrangement, then.’

‘Not quite. One more thing.’ Again he leaned closer, and she could smell fish sauce on his breath. ‘You aren’t the only craven Northlander trying to escape. You’re not the only one selling off the treasures of millennia, in a desperate attempt to save her children from the ice.’

She had no idea if that was true. But if she was keeping such a secret, why not others?

‘This is the end of Northland’s long and manipulative history — the end of your smugness and arrogance. And it ends like this. You have come here to beg, for all you deny it. I want to hear you say it.’

She hesitated for one heartbeat, composing herself, ensuring her voice would be strong. ‘Then I beg. I beg you to save me and my children, Barmocar.’

He laughed, slapped his thigh, and sat back. ‘Very good. If you have the relics before we leave, you come with us. If not, you stay. You can show yourself out.’ He turned away from her, and began to speak to his wife in his own thick tongue.

She stood and left the apartment, unescorted. She thought of Pyxeas. She had taken his advice in the end, she was fleeing to the south, just as he had recommended. But now she wished with all her heart she had taken her children with her when she had escorted him last year to Hantilios — and wished she had never been foolish enough to come back.