dependency. ‘He doesn’t talk about that much. Anyhow he always seems to have been a tough kid.
‘As soon as he was old enough to steal one of his father’s horses, he rode out of there and made his way back to Troy. That’s where he’s been based ever since, as far as I can tell — making a living by trading, mercenary fighting, sailing-’
‘Piracy. Banditry.’
‘That’s the nature of the times.’
‘Tell me how he met you.’
‘He saved my life.’ He paused. ‘There was a fight in a tavern. I was fourteen. I was on the losing side. But when Praxo waded in, he was only sixteen but already twice my size, the odds changed. We’ve been friends ever since. At first he was dominant, of course; he was older, more street-tough, stronger. But with time-’
‘You hesitate. What haven’t you said? Go back. This “tavern”. Was it really a tavern?’
Suddenly he feared her, her sharp mind, her probing words.
‘Praxo told me what you had to do to survive. There is no shame-’
‘It was a brothel.’ The words came in a rush, but softly, so the others could not hear. ‘One man refused to pay me. He-I was thrown out into the street, for I did not have the bit of silver that was the barman’s usual fee. The man was waiting, with his friends. They grabbed me. Five or six of them. They were farmers, I think, strong as oxen. They got me in a ruined house. I…’
‘They took it in turns, I suppose.’
‘They were crushing me. I could not breathe. They would have killed me, I think, before they finished. But Praxo had seen me, saw the men pull me into the house.’
‘He saved you.’
‘I think he just felt like a fight. They were drunk and foolish, and, though strong, they were farmers, not warriors. He pulled them off me, broke the arm of one of them, the rest ran off. One against five or six, and he won.
‘I was barely conscious. He sat me up against a wall until I could breathe properly.’ He remembered the ache in his bruised chest, the burning pain of his ripped rectum, the foul taste of semen. These were memories he had put in a sealed pot and buried in the dark undersoil of his mind. How had this woman dragged them out of him so quickly?
She was staring at him as she walked, studying his face as he scrutinised his periplus, squeezing meaning out of it. ‘You shouldn’t be ashamed. You couldn’t help any of it. You were a victim.’
‘No.’ He hated the word, and anger flashed. ‘Not a victim.’
‘All right. But that’s not all. Is it? What else happened? Go back again. Praxo sat you against the wall. You were recovering. What then?’
‘He was laughing. Full of fire. He’d just won a fight that he would talk about for years. The men had brought some mead, and he took that and he drank it. And he said I should pay him for saving me. Years later, you know, he spoke of that night. He apologised, he said we would never speak of it again, that no man would know, and that.. ’
‘How did you pay him?… Ah. With your only coin.’
‘He doesn’t lie with boys, not Praxo. Not to his taste. But that night, he was full of himself, he said the fight had made him hard. I used my mouth. He closed his eyes, and shouted the names of women he had lain with.’
‘So that’s it,’ she breathed. ‘And yet you stayed with him?’
‘He was ashamed, I think. Well, he was once he’d slept off the drink. He said I could go with him. I didn’t have to go back to the brothel. I could stay beside him, learn to fight. I think he meant this as a gesture of pity, he thought I wouldn’t last. But I learned fast, and bulked up, and we were soon an effective team. Then we rowed our first ship together.’
‘And that’s the hold he has over you.’
‘No. He has no hold! I told you, as we grew older, and it became clear I was the smart one-’
She was whispering now, into his ear, intense. ‘I know how it feels, Qirum, believe me. I was used by Hatti soldiers. I remember their faces, every one. I remember their filth. I learned their names when I could. When I return to Hattusa in my pomp I will seek them out, and their families.’ She smiled. ‘You, though. You are the victim who kept his rapist close, haven’t you?’ And she walked ahead of him, cutting off the conversation.
Qirum strode on, angry, humiliated, as he had not felt for many years. Up ahead he heard Praxo’s voice, telling some joke to the men, his booming laughter, his gusty singing resuming once more.
15
The Year of the Fire Mountain: Late Spring
The elders of Etxelur gathered for their convocation: the process of selecting the new Annid of Annids in succession to Kuma. It was almost a month before midsummer and the Giving, when the new appointment would be announced to the world and celebrated.
They had come to the central mound of the great earthwork called the Door to the Mothers’ House. The Door, a very ancient complex of earthworks, was the navel of Northland history. In this age a ring of lodges had been built atop the central mound, one for each of the great Houses of Northland. And today, in the space encircled by the lodges, the House leaders, the Annids themselves, and the Jackdaws, Beavers, Voles, Swallows and the rest, with the priests mediating and counselling, were arguing in the open air, in tight, bickering groups, or sitting on pallets stuffed with dried reeds. In among the Annids were representatives of Districts far from Great Etxelur itself, the Markets to east and west, austere librarians from the Archive, engineers and craftsmen from the Manufactory, even a few cheerful-looking innkeeper types from the Scambles.
The leaders of the Houses wore their ceremonial robes, and fur, feathers, polished leather gleamed. They looked like a flock of birds, Milaqa thought idly. Big fat exotic birds. As one of a loose band of advisers and supporters, she sat on the grassy sward with Teel and Riban and others outside the central circle. She had been here for three days already, the proceedings had gone on all day, it was mid-afternoon, and it was insufferably tedious.
At least the setting was magnificent. The sun, still high in a clear southern sky, bathed the face of the Wall with light, the sweeping surface with its galleries and ledges, the climbing nets and ladders dangling from the roof, the huge scaffolding structures of the Beavers. It looked like something natural, she thought idly, like a great hive, rather than something made by people.
But the talking went on and on. The core of the confrontation seemed to be between Bren, leader of the Jackdaw traders, and a group of Annids. His principal opponent was a severe older Annid, a woman called Noli. Bren was pushing his own candidate for the office of Annid of Annids, a young, slightly confused-looking woman called Raka. The debate was passionately argued, but it was all very formal. The participants always spoke to each other via a neutral speaker, one of the priests, they used an archaic form of the Northland tongue, and every word they spoke was transcribed on a linen roll by a Wolf scribe. In his late thirties, Jackdaw Bren’s face was handsome, but it was oddly too symmetrical — too perfect — and it was severe, Milaqa thought, with deep-grooved lines around his mouth and on his forehead. He was the sort of man it was impossible to believe had ever been a child. Somehow it didn’t surprise Milaqa to find out that Raka, his candidate, was actually Bren’s niece.
Milaqa glanced at the sky, where gulls wheeled so high they were almost out of sight, and she smelled the sea on a soft breeze from the north. She imagined she wasn’t stuck in this dull session of talk, talk, talk but swimming in the cold sea, or flying up in the air as free as the gulls…
An elbow poked her ribs. She jolted upright.
The elbow had been Riban’s. Her cousin, a young acolyte in the House of the Wolves, was grinning at her. He was taller than she was, even sitting cross-legged on the grass; he had a dark, open face whose good humour was not ruined by his mouthful of wooden teeth. ‘You were snoring.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You were about to. Mind you, you wouldn’t be the only one. Half these fat old fools have spent the whole day dozing away, dreaming of their evening feast.’
Milaqa snorted a laugh.
