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The matriarch suddenly lifted both hands and voice and Malta focused on what she was saying.

‘We can no longer wait and hope. None of us can afford to do so. For if we do, our secrets shall be secrets no longer. Had not the river protected us, eating their ship to splinters as they fled, we would have been forced to kill them all ourselves. Bingtown Traders! How could this have happened to us? What has become of your vows? Tonight you listen to Jani Khuprus, but be assured I speak for all the Rain Wild Traders. This is more than a threat we face.’

She paused. A long silence filled the Concourse. Then a mutter of voices rose. Malta assumed she was finished. She leaned over to her mother, and whispered, ‘I’m going to go get something to drink.’

‘Sit still and be silent!’ her grandmother hissed at both of them. There were deep lines of tension in her brow and around her mouth. Her mother didn’t say a word. Malta sat back with a sigh.

One of the jowly brothers to their left rose abruptly. ‘Trader Khuprus!’ he called out. When all heads turned to him, he asked simply, ‘What do you expect us to do?’

‘Keep your promises!’ Jani Khuprus snapped.

Then, in a slightly milder tone, as if her own reply had surprised her, she added, ‘We must remain united. We must send representatives to the Satrap. For obvious reasons, they cannot come from Rain Wild families. But we would stand united with you in the message.’

‘And that message would be?’ someone queried from another part of the hall.

‘I’m really thirsty,’ Malta whispered. Her mother frowned at her.

‘We must demand the Satrap honour our original covenant. We must demand he call back these so-called New Traders, and cede back to us any lands he has deeded them.’

‘And if he refuses?’ This from a Trader woman in the back of the hall.

Jani Khuprus shifted uneasily. She did not want to answer the question.

‘Let us first ask him to honour the word of his forebears. We have never even asked him. We have complained and grumbled amongst ourselves, we have disputed individual claims. But not once have we stood up as a people and said, “Honour your word if you expect us to honour ours”.’

‘And if he refuses?’ the woman repeated steadily.

Jani Khuprus lifted her gloved hands and then let them fall back to her sides.

‘Then he is without honour,’ she said in a quiet voice that still carried to every part of the hall.

‘What have the Traders to do with those who are without honour? If he fails in his word, then we should withdraw ours. Stop sending him tribute. Market our goods wherever we please, rather than funnelling the best of them through Jamaillia.’ In an even quieter voice, she said, ‘Drive out the New Traders. Rule ourselves.’

A cacophony of voices broke out, some raised in outrage, others shrill with fear, and still others roaring their approval.

At the end of the row, Davad Restart stood suddenly.

‘Hear me!’ he shouted, and when no one paid attention, he climbed up on top of his chair, where he balanced ponderously.

‘HEAR ME!’ he roared out, a surprising sound from such an ineffectual man.

All eyes turned to him and the babble died down.

‘This is madness,’ he announced. ‘Think what will happen next. He won’t let Bingtown go that easily.

The Satrap will send shiploads of soldiers.

He will confiscate our holdings. He will deed them over to the New Traders, and make slaves of our families.

No. We must work with the New Traders. Give them, not all, but enough to make them content.

Make them a part of us, as we did with the Three Ships’ Immigrants.

I’m not saying we should teach them all we know, or that they should be allowed to trade with Rain Wild Traders, but… ’

‘Then what are you saying, Restart?’ someone demanded angrily from the back of the hall. ‘As long as you’re speaking for your New Trader friends, just how much do they want of us?’

Someone else chimed in, ‘If the Satrap were interested in sending ships up the Inside Passage, he’d have cleaned out the pirates long ago.

They say the old patrol galleys are rotting at their quays, for lack of taxes to man them or repair them.

All the money goes for the Satrap to entertain himself.

He cares nothing about the serpents and pirates that devour our trade.

All he cares is that he be amused. The Satrap is no threat to us.

Why should we bother with demands. Let’s just run these New Traders off ourselves. We don’t need Jamaillia!’

‘Then where would we sell our goods? All the richest trade is to the south, unless you want to deal with the northern barbarians.’

‘That’s another thing. The pirates. The old covenant said the Satrap would protect us from sea marauders. If we’re making demands, we should tell him that—’

‘We do need Jamaillia! What are we without Jamaillia? Jamaillia is poetry and art and music, Jamaillia is our mother culture. You can’t cut off trade there and still—’

‘And the serpents! The damned slavers draw the serpents, we should demand that slavers be outlawed from the Inside Passage—’

‘We are an honourable folk. Even if the Satrap cannot recall how to keep his word, we are still bound by—’

‘— will take our homes and lands and make slaves of us all. We’ll be right back where our forebears were, exiles and criminals, with no hope of reprieve.’

‘We should set up our own patrol ships, to start with. Not just to keep New Traders away from the mouth of the Rain Wild, but to hunt serpents and pirates as well. Yes, and to make clear to Chalced once and for all that the Rain Wild River is not their border, but that their control stops at Hover Inlet. They been pushing—’

‘You’d have us in two wars at once then, battling both Chalced and Jamaillia! That’s stupid. Remember, were it not for Jamaillia and the Satrap, Chalced would have tried to overrun us years ago. That’s what we risk if we cut ourselves free of JamaiUia. War with Chalced!’

‘War? Who speaks of war? All we need to ask is that the Satrap Cosgo keep the promises that Satrap Esclepius made to us!’

Once more the hall erupted with a chorus of angry voices.

Traders stood on their chairs, or shouted from where they stood.

Malta couldn’t make sense of any of it. She doubted anyone could.

‘Mother,’ she whispered pleadingly. ‘I am dying of thirst! And it’s so stuffy in here.

Can I just go outside for a breath of air? ’

‘Not now!’ her mother snapped.

‘Malta, shut up,’ her grandmother added. She didn’t even look at her, she seemed to be trying to follow a conversation between two men three rows ahead of them.

‘Please,’ Jani Khuprus was calling from the stage.

‘Hear me, please! Please.’ As the babble died down, she spoke more quietly, forcing folk to be silent to hear her.

‘This is our biggest danger. We quarrel among ourselves. We speak with many voices, and so the Satrap heeds none of them. We need a strong group of people to take our words to the Satrap, and we must be united and sincere in what we say. One strong voice he must heed, but as long as we tear at one another like…’

‘I have to use the backhouse,’ Malta whispered. There. That was something they never argued with. Her grandmother gave a disapproving shake of her head, but they let her go. Davad Restart was so intent on what Jani Khuprus was saying he scarcely noticed her slip past him.

She stopped at the refreshment table to pour herself a glass of wine.

She was not the only one to have left her seat.

In different parts of the hall, knots of folk were forming and talking, all but ignoring the Rain Wild Trader.

Some folk were arguing amongst themselves, others nodding in mutual agreement with her words.

Almost everyone there was substantially older than she was.

She looked for Cerwin Trell, but he was still seated with his family and appeared to be avidly interested in what was going on.

Politics. Privately Malta believed that if everyone just ignored them, life would go on as it always had.

The arguments would probably last the rest of the evening and spoil the party.

She sighed and took her wine with her as she stepped outside into the crisp winter night.

It was full dark now. The footpath torches had burned down.

Above the icy winter stars sparkled. She glanced up at them now and thought of flame-jewels.

The blues and the greens were the rarest. She couldn’t wait to tell Delo that.

She knew how she would say it, as if it were something she just assumed that everyone knew.

Delo was the best for sharing such things with, because Delo was a hopeless gossip.

She’d repeat it to everyone. Hadn’t she spread word among all the girls about Malta’s green gown?

Of course, she had also told them about Davad Restart making Malta go home.

She’d been an idiot to tell Delo about that, but she’d been so mad, she’d just had to talk to someone.

And tonight would make up for that embarrassment.

She wouldn’t tell Delo how bored she had been, only that she had stood outside and chatted with Jani Khuprus herself about flame-jewels.

She strolled down past the coaches, sipping at her wine.

Some of the coachmen sat within the carriages, out of the cold, while others hunched on the boxes.

Some few had gathered at the corner of the drive to gossip amongst themselves, and probably share a sip or two from a flask.