over and punched the boy in the side of the head. Novu went sprawling. ‘I told you to shut up! And if you did what I told you, you wouldn’t be in this plight now, would you?’ Magho took a deep breath, his massive chest expanding. Then he sat up and turned to Chona, his smile returning. ‘Don’t worry about that. I caught him above the hairline. The bruise won’t show.’
Chona watched the boy rise, cautiously, rubbing his head. He wondered why the father thought Chona would care. And why, if the boy angered his father so much, he was keeping him here in the house during this meeting. ‘He doesn’t bother me, Magho. He’s just a child.’
‘A child? A child-man, and that’s all he’ll ever be, I fear. The gods know he’s a difficult one. Here, try some of this tea.’ He handed Chona a clay bowl of hot, steaming green liquid. ‘We’ve business to do.’ He glanced over at Chona’s pack. ‘I take it you have what I want.’
Chona allowed himself to smile. ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise, my friend.’ He leaned over and unfolded his pack. In with the bits of sky-fallen iron and shaped flint and fragments of reindeer bone carved into elusive fish and lumbering bears, he had tucked small parcels wrapped in the softest doe skin. He made a show of unwrapping them slowly. Magho all but drooled.
Small, precious items, bartered across the Continent, were Chona’s stock in trade. Not for him the heavy work of trading meat or grain, or sacks of unworked flint. What he liked to carry were treasures valuable far beyond their size and weight - and the further from their source you took them the more valuable they became. The fragments of obsidian he unwrapped now, taken from sites in a mountain range far from here, were among the most valuable of all.
He handed Magho one of the smaller pieces. Magho turned the black, shining rock over in his hands, his eyes wide, his mouth a dark circle. ‘I take it you have better examples,’ he breathed.
‘Oh, yes. All from the finest source in the known world. And all yours, if—’
‘If I can pay.’ Magho let out his throaty laugh. ‘I do like you, Chona. Well, I like all traders. At least you’re honest, which is more than can be said for most people in this wretched world.’
‘That particular piece would make a fine axe-head,’ Chona said. ‘Or perhaps something more abstract. An amulet—’
‘Oh, I’ll leave that to the experts,’ Magho said. ‘There’s a man on the other side of town, called Fless, very old now, about forty and half-blind, but he works stone as you wouldn’t believe. My way is simply to give him such pieces as this, and let him see what lies within the stone, see with his cataract-blighted eyes, and then tease it out, flake by flake with his bits of bone.’ He mimed a fine pressing. ‘Marvellous to see him work, with those twisted-up hands and his milky eyes. Yes, he’s the man. If I can get his time, if somebody hasn’t stolen him away.’
Chona took back the obsidian scrap, and handed him another piece. ‘I’m sure what Fless makes of these pieces would dazzle your friends like rays of the sun . . .’
This was the odd part of trading with the men of Jericho. Everywhere in the world you found men, and sometimes women, of power, who accumulated wealth - maybe trinkets, maybe more functional items like tools or food. But everywhere else you showed off your power by giving your treasure away: the more you had to give, the greater you were. In Jericho’s elaborate, layered society men strutted and showed off what they owned, be it women and children, goats and stores of grain - and pointless, purposeless trinkets. Your status came from what you kept to yourself, not what you gave away.
Well, Chona didn’t care. He never judged a man he traded with. Magho could wipe his arse on his precious obsidian for all Chona cared - as long as Chona got a fair price first.
But the boy, Novu, still nursing his head, snorted his contempt at Chona’s manipulation.
Magho handed back the stone. ‘Let’s do business. How many pieces?’
‘A dozen. I’ll show you the rest when we have a deal.’
Magho nodded. ‘Very well. So let me show you what I have to trade . . .’ He produced a figurine of a pregnant woman, carved of the tooth of