such a prize to you. Look at you — you’re in rags — you have no power to speak for the King in Hattusa. What could you possibly have to trade?’
‘In these turbulent times, they and their allies will receive the partnership and the protection of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen.’
There was a guffaw from the doorway — Praxo, laden with sacks of water. ‘Trojan, you need to stop up that mouth of hers with your pork sword before she makes me piss my pants laughing.’ He threw down the sacks.
Qirum set a sack before Kilushepa, and loosened the bonds at her wrists so she could drink.
‘I won’t tell you how much this water cost me,’ Praxo said, settling to the floor. ‘There’s a secret pipeline, you know. Laid down in previous generations by wise rulers, to keep the town watered during sieges. There’s a sort of cabal that knows where it is, and runs it. About the only place you can get clean water in Troy nowadays. I hope what you’ve got between your legs is worth it, oh queen.’
She did not reply. She merely drank, steadily.
Gently, Qirum took the sack away from her. ‘Take it easy. Your stomach needs to get used to being full. You’re expecting me to help you achieve this dream you speak of?’
‘As I said, I don’t have much choice.’ She turned that startlingly pale gaze on him again. ‘But perhaps the old gods favoured me. For I saw something in you, Qirum. Something you may not know is there yourself. A hunger. I think you will rise up from this squalor, the ruins of a devastated town…’
Praxo swigged wine and laughed. ‘You’ve got it wrong, lady. If not for this squalor he wouldn’t exist at all.’
‘Be still, Praxo.’
‘No, it’s true. He was conceived on the very night Troy fell to the Greeks. I don’t suppose he told you that. His mother was a highborn, supposedly, but everybody in Troy these days says they are descended from highborns-’
‘Shut up!’
‘And his father was a Greek. It was a rape! A quick in-and-out, and the lad goes on his way for a bit more plunder and mayhem, and if he still lives he probably doesn’t even remember it. Just one more hole to plug, in a long line of holes.’ He gestured at Qirum. ‘And here’s the result. Neither Greek nor Trojan, unintended, wanted by nobody, dumped by his mother as soon as she could manage it, and left with nothing to sell but his little pink arse!’
Qirum bunched his fist, longing to strike the man. But his anger was overwhelmed by a deep ache of humiliation.
Kilushepa watched him steadily. ‘We will put this right, you and I'
These words drew him in like a fish on a line. ‘How?’
‘By winning. In the morning we will start.’
‘And tonight?’
She held out her arms. ‘If you untie me, and send away this oaf — and allow me to clean myself, to make myself as I once was — I will show you, as I promised, how I captivated a king.’
Praxo laughed, and stood clumsily. ‘Well, you’ll find me at the whorehouse as usual. Enjoy the night, friend, for it’s all you’re going to get out of that old stick.’
‘Go!’
Kilushepa held out her bound arms. Entranced, fearful, Qirum reached for his knife.
8
The men hauled the skin boat safely up the beach from the rushing surf.
Tibo, exhausted by the rowing and the sun, got his father’s permission to take a break. Stiffly, unused to the land after so long at sea, he walked away from the boat, up to the softer sand above the waterline. It was morning still but the sun beat down from high in a cloudless sky, and his skin prickled with sweat and sand and salt, slick with the oily unguent the men had given him to keep from burning. He climbed a shallow dune and flung himself down, panting.
He had crossed the mighty Western Ocean. He was far from home. He was fifteen years old.
From here he could see more of the landscape of this distant continent, a bank of sandy hills, a forest like a wall, remote mountains. The forest was dense and mysterious, and he saw rustlings in the green — heard a cry like a distressed child. Soon he would have to penetrate that strangeness. To his left, to the south, he saw a stream of clear-looking fresh water, gushing down a gully in the open, sandy earth and to the sea. Beyond it he saw more such streams, and further out the ocean itself was discoloured. This, his father Deri had told him, was an estuary, the outflow of a tremendous river that drained the heart of this strange country.
It was no accident the boat had landed here. Traders from Northland had been coming to this remote shore since time beyond memory, voyages recorded in graceful swirls and loops in the Archive in the Wall. With Deri’s detailed periplus and the knowledge and experience worn deep in the heads of the older sailors, they had made their way here without any difficulty, hopping down the long and convoluted coasts of these western continents, foraging and trading for provisions. But it was all extraordinary to Tibo, even though he had spent much of his young life travelling with his father between Northland and his father’s family home on Kirike’s Land, an island in the middle of the Western Ocean.
Looking back, he saw the sailors were getting on with the chore of unloading the boat. They dumped out the oars and leather sail and mast, their packs of clothing, dried food, water sacks and fishing gear. Then they turned over the boat itself to allow it to dry out, exposing a hull of tanned ox-hide crusted with barnacles. Most of the men had stripped down to their loincloths. They looked like winter animals, bears perhaps, muscular and hairy, out of place on the hot sand of the beach. A cousin of Tibo’s father’s called Nago, comparatively skinny, of few words but a leader when the oars came out, ran down to the sea, pissed noisily, and hurled himself into the water.
His father Deri walked up. He carried two light packs, and bronze swords in their scabbards. He sat on the dune crest, and handed his son a flask. ‘We’ll fill these up in the stream. You look thoughtful.’
‘Look at the lads on the beach. We’re a long way from home.’
‘I know it’s all strange,’ Deri murmured. ‘But we of Kirike’s Land are at home here, we know our way around. You’ll see.’
Deri was not yet thirty. He wore his red hair long and tied back from his face; his skin was paler than his son’s and burned easily, but in the months of the journey it had weathered to a leathery texture, the creases around his eyes prominent where he had been squinting against the sun. He looked strong, at ease. Tibo couldn’t believe he would ever be so effortlessly confident. And yet Deri had been younger than Tibo was now when he had become a father.
‘So,’ Deri said. He held out one of the packs to Tibo. ‘You ready to go?’
‘Go where?’
‘To find the Jaguar people, of course.’ He stood in a single, supple movement. ‘We’ll just follow the estuary inland, and into the green. You won’t believe their country until you see it. And there we will beg the services of their king’s sculptor.’
Tibo stood unwillingly. ‘Now? We only just arrived.’
‘But this is why we came.’ He helped Tibo hitch the pack on his back; it was cloth and leather sturdily sewn, and it sat comfortably on a frame of willow. ‘Let me tell you something. I was born on Kirike’s Land but grew up in Northland, because my mother, your grandmother, came from there, and then I went back to Kirike’s Land to raise my own family. And in Northland we are forever looked down on by those leathery old snobs in their great Houses, the Annids, the Wolves. We’re just boatmen from some rock in the middle of the ocean, and that’s all Kuma was to them. If you’re low-born, you stay low-born. But now everybody agrees your aunt Kuma was one of the best Annids who ever lived.
‘ That’s why we came here — we, the family of Kuma herself — you and me. We will find the sculptor who will create the greatest honour of all for Kuma, by which she will be remembered for all time.’ He ruffled Tibo’s hair. ‘Nothing to it. Just watch where you step. Oh, and keep away from the water.’ He led the way down the beach to the stream, where he bent to fill a water flask.
