As the second horn sounded, and the evening of the long midsummer day approached, the three women from the Western Continents who had stood near Rina earlier met in a bar, set in the face of the Wall.
Walks In Mist had discovered this tavern. It was on the fringe of the Wall District called the Springs, a precise eight hundred paces from Etxelur, a place full of taverns, hostels and, Walks in Mist suspected, brothels. This place seemed respectable enough; built into a terrace in the face of the Wall, it gave onto a balcony overlooking Old Etxelur and the lowland.
Her friends joined her now, Sabela from the southern continent’s High Country in her robe of llama wool, and Xipuhl from the Land of the Jaguar with her fine steel mirror at her breast. Walks In Mist herself, from the Land of the Sky Wolf, wore her eagle feathers in her hair. Each of them proclaimed who they were in this baffling, crowded place — the centre of the world, if only for midsummer.
‘I know it isn’t much to look at,’ Walks In Mist said as the others settled. And she was right; the floor was rough, the walls unfinished growstone. ‘But that’s what I like about it. That and the view.’
They turned to look out over Northland, a tremendous plain that stretched to the horizon. The sun was low now, the sky a rich deep blue. The marshes and canals shone like ribbons of sky, the old flood mounds cast long shadows, and fires sparked everywhere. At the foot of the Wall itself were tremendous warehouses where even in the gathering dark a steady stream of traffic came and went, and rows of brightly lit shops provided their customers with food, drink, pilgrimage tokens and Giving-day souvenirs.
Walks In Mist leaned from her chair and ran a hand over the lip of the growstone balcony. ‘Think how old this stuff must be. Think what it’s seen, how much history. And now here we are.’
‘Cradled like an eagle chick in the palm of an old man’s hand,’ said Sabela.
Xipuhl laughed, and the dancing mirror on her chest cast reflections from the candle. ‘You are always the poet of our little gang,’ she said to Sabela. Xipuhl was a little older than the others, and was prone to be the one who did the teasing.
But Sabela was right, Walks In Mist thought. She did feel cradled here. She always felt safe in Northland, with its antiquity and stability and the obvious physical strength of its great Wall. Why, here they were, three women from across the lands Northlanders called the Western Continents, all of them comfortably speaking in the only tongue they shared — the liquid language of Northland, a tongue that had nothing in common with their own native speech at all.
The three of them had found each other during the long sea crossing on a huge Northlander ship. Every three years the elders of Etxelur sent a flotilla across the Western Ocean to the Land of the Jaguar to pick up a selection of especially honoured, or especially well-paying, guests from the Western Continents to come to the midsummer Giving. Walks In Mist herself was here for trade; she was one of a delegation from Sky Wolf seeking to expand cotton exports. Xipuhl was part of a formal diplomatic legation from the Land of the Jaguar, and much of her midsummer had been taken up with ‘stuffy meetings with old men in airless rooms’, she had said.
Sabela was the only one without a job during the trip. It was her husband who was in the business of exporting llama and alpaca wool and other High Country textiles to Northland. Sabela’s people were always honoured in Northland because of historic links; the High Country had given Northlanders the potato, a precious crop which, they said, had enabled their unique culture to survive on the fringe of a continent full of farmers. Of the three of them Sabela was the junior partner, Walks In Mist supposed, and she was a rather vague young woman — her head in the clouds, Xipuhl said, just like the pretty country she came from — but on the ship, she had been the one who had brought them together.
‘Well,’ Sabela said now, ‘I think what I’m going to like about this tavern is the drinks they serve. What a selection!’
The menu was inscribed into the oak surface of the table itself, in the loops and bars of the unique Northlander script. The three women chose drinks from across the eastern half of the planet: Albian ale for Xipuhl, a decent Gairan wine for Walks In Mist, and a fine potato spirit from Rus for Sabela. When the drinks arrived they knocked their cups together.
Xipuhl said briskly, ‘I imagine the next time we drink together we will be back on the ship, for it’s going to take me the rest of my time to get packed up.’
Sabela pulled a face. ‘Be grateful you don’t have children. I’ll swear my two support the economy of the local trinket makers single-handed.’ The breeze turned, an oddly chill wind blew in from the west, and they all reacted, shifting, pulling their wraps tighter. ‘It has been a cool summer,’ Sabela murmured. ‘My two have complained about that.’
Walks In Mist frowned. ‘I’ve heard mutterings about great meetings of scholars, discussions of the turning of the weather. Do you think there’s anything in it?’
‘I’ve not much truck for scholars,’ Xipuhl said firmly. ‘Who can know what the future holds?’
‘And we’ll not let it govern our lives,’ Sabela said.
The horn blasted for a third time, announcing the noisy eruptor display that would end the long day of celebration. People started to drift out of the tavern.
‘Let’s make a pact,’ Walks In Mist said impulsively. ‘We’ll keep in touch. Let’s meet when the Northland fleet comes again to the West, in three years’ time.’
Sabela laughed girlishly. ‘Oh, yes — what a lovely idea.’
Xipuhl grinned. ‘Well, as you are the only companions I’ve found on this trip who haven’t wanted to get some kind of business out of me, I’m for it.’
‘And we’ll come back to this very bar,’ Sabela said. ‘And order the same drinks, three years from now.’
‘Agreed,’ said Walks In Mist, and they raised their cups again and toasted the pact.
But the breeze gusted once more. The candles on the tables flickered, and around the bar people pulled cloaks over their shoulders. A few people laughed, and sent mock curses at the little mothers and other gods for their wilfulness.
‘That’s if we’re all still here in three years’ time,’ Xipuhl said with morbid humour.