Iron Winter

3

The First Year of the Longwinter: Midsummer Solstice

‘The steam caravan is late.’ Thaxa watched the sun, which had already passed its highest point on this midsummer day. He squinted up at the elaborate mechanical clock face built into the light tower over his head, and looked along the gleaming track of the Iron Way, bonded to the roof of the Wall on which he stood with his wife. ‘If the envoys from Daidu don’t arrive, the afternoon is going to be awkward to say the least. And that wretched uncle of yours is late too. At this rate we won’t get the ceremonies done before they fire the end-of-day eruptors.’

Rina tried to hide her irritation at her husband’s fretting. It didn’t help that she was cold too. She tucked her hands into the cuffs of her long-sleeved robe; it was the peak of summer yet there was a chill in the air, and there had been a ground frost when she rose this morning. ‘Try to be calm. You don’t want to alarm our guests.’ Who stood to either side of Rina and Thaxa in a row on this parapet atop the Wall, representatives of nations from across much of the known world, more of them riding up to the roof in the steam elevators all the time. Near Rina, for example, were three women of the Western Continents, strangers before they had travelled, Rina had learned, from different nations and dressed as differently as could be imagined, standing together now like exotic birds of variegated plumages. This was a typical scene in Etxelur, on midsummer day, the world brought together in Northland hospitality. ‘As for Uncle Pyxeas, I’m imagining Crimm is doing his best to bring him back across the ocean. But Pyxeas hardly matters.’

‘He’s to address the Water Council about the weather changes he thinks are coming.’

‘For the foreigners the issue at this Giving is dried fish, not maunderings about the weather. Oh, stop fussing and fidgeting, Thaxa! There’s nothing we can do about the Daidu caravan, or my uncle. When there is nothing to do but wait, then you wait.’

‘I do my best to support you, you know,’ he said with only the mildest exasperation at her ill temper.

This was the reality of their relationship, as, at the age of fifty years and nearly thirty years of marriage, they both understood very well. Rina knew she could not have functioned nearly so well as an Annid without her husband’s patient, fussy, competent assistance, and his tolerance of her bossiness. She allowed herself a smile. ‘I do know. How are the twins getting on?’

Thaxa looked through the crowd atop the Wall. ‘Nelo is with the Hatti party, and he’s doing a good job of not laughing at their incessant praying to Jesus. Alxa is still with the Carthaginians. Hmm. See the way that young princeling of theirs is looking at her? She’s only fifteen.’

Rina didn’t worry about the twins — or rather, she didn’t allow herself to. Rina and her husband were both from families of the House of the Owl, the Annids, the ancient guild of rulers and diplomats, which had long practice in inducting its children into the subtle arts of compromise, negotiation and flattery. Besides, fifteen was seen as a pretty mature age in most parts of the world; if she were Frankish or German Alxa would probably already be married off, already worn down by childbirth and never-ending work in the fields. The twins could look after themselves — at least, Rina thought, they could in normal times. But at the back of her mind there was a niggling awareness that there was little normal about this particular solstice.

This was Northland’s midsummer Giving, the heart of the year at the heart of the world, and a ceremony of great age — older than the pyramids of Egypt, far older than the upstart empires of Carthage and New Hattusa. In the great library of the Wall Archive, documentation existed to prove that antiquity. The world flocked here at midsummer as seabirds flocked to their nesting cliffs in the spring; it always had and always would, for this was Great Etxelur, Navel of the World, and the central and oldest of the Wall’s many evenly spaced Districts.

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.

And now, on top of all that, the steam caravan was late. For months communications had been disrupted by drought, famine, and petty banditry. But this was yet another thread dangling loose, and Rina did not like dangling threads, and as time wore on she could sense the dignitaries’ impatience slowly growing.

Now, at last, far to the east, Rina made out a white plume of steam, a caravan like a chain of glittering toys crawling along the track. But even before the caravan reached Etxelur, runners on horseback delivered the message that the Iron Way had brought nobody from Cathay this year.

‘Then we must proceed with the Giving negotiations without them,’ Rina murmured to Thaxa. ‘The Mongol princes of Daidu were only a ceremonial presence anyhow.’

‘That’s not what Pyxeas says,’ Thaxa pointed out. ‘Your uncle claims that the Cathay scholars have information which-’

‘Information, information!’ she snapped. ‘What good is that? Can you eat it? Dried fish, however, you can eat, and that’s what matters. Let’s get these people back inside the Wall before that breeze gets any sharper and they start complaining even more loudly.’ She pulled her tunic closer around her and made for the Carthaginian party, smiling fixedly as she prepared her apology.