‘An eagle,’ Teel said.

‘What?’

‘I saw an eagle – a sea eagle, I think – wheeling away over there.’ He pointed out to sea. Teel was not a tall man but he was bulky, given to fat, and he habitually shaved his head to the scalp. Milaqa knew he was around thirty years old, but he looked younger, his face oddly round, like a baby’s.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she said. ‘The eagles nest in crevices in the Wall’s outer face. Lots of birds do. And on the inner face too.’

‘Wearing away the Wall bit by bit, with each peck of a curious chick, each streak of guano on the growstone. Well. We can leave it to the Beavers to fret about that.’ His blue eyes were running in the cold breeze. ‘Thank you for coming up.’

‘Did I have a choice?’

‘Well, I didn’t drag you here, so yes, you had a choice. I know how difficult this is for you. To lose your mother in your sixteenth year, the year of your House choice – you’ll have to face the whole family at the equinox gathering-’

‘Don’t give me advice about my feelings, you ball-less old man.’

He laughed, unperturbed. ‘Ball-less, yes, I grant you. But not that old, surely.’

‘Let’s get this over.’ She walked deliberately to the sky burial platform. A couple of gulls had landed again; they fled into the air. Milaqa lifted her cloak so it covered her mouth. Teel had a linen scarf, grimy from use, that he pulled over his mouth and nose. And Milaqa looked closely at her mother’s body for the first time.

It had only been a month since Kuma had been brought home from the Albian forest where she had met her death. A fall from her horse had killed her, her companions had told the family, an aurochs chase that went wrong, the back of her skull smashed on a rock – an accident, it happened all the time, there would be no point hunting the great cattle in their tall forests if it wasn’t dangerous.