The sergeant was clearly not a stupid man and it was fairly well known how the Rekef Outlander employed agents of all races. Now his hurried salute and his issuing orders to his men provided all the reassurance Thalric needed.

Shortly thereafter, Thalric had Achaeos safely stowed in an infirmary, with some of his Moth-kinden kinsmen staring nervously at him from around the door, and Che sitting at the man’s bedside. By that time Thalric himself was standing before the local Rekef Outlander officer.

The man was another sergeant, and Thalric could not believe his luck. He guessed that Tharn merited the barest minimum of Rekef presence, probably making do with this one man alone. Nobody cared about such backward little places. As far as the Empire was concerned, the garrison here was merely to keep the Moths from bothering Helleron, so the Tharen governor was only a major and the Rekef had better things to do. He would feel ashamed, later, of the way in which he now browbeat the wretched Rekef sergeant, but maybe that aggression was something he had been needing to get out of his system for a long time.

And news travelled fast. After that, when he strode the corridors of Tharn, now lit with hastily cobbled-together gas-lanterns, the locals and the conquerors alike gave him a wide berth, pointing him out to each other as the Rekef’s man. In the shock of relief, he almost forgot that it was not true, and that Che and Achaeos were even there. Instead he went to the suite of rooms he had commandeered, with good-sized windows cut into the outer wall of the mountain, and waited there for the information he had requested. For what else would the Rekef’s man do, after arriving, but receive reports and pick the local intelligencer’s brains?

Che had wanted to stay with Achaeos throughout, but the Moths refused to tend him in her presence, finding that a Beetle-kinden in their halls was more of an insult than any number of Wasps. Only after she had reluctantly withdrawn did his people begin their business with him. The doctors arrived before the inquisitors: administering salves and poultices, chants and charms, two full days of careful ritual and healing skill. By the time the questions started Achaeos was fit enough to raise himself up on one elbow. He was able, at least, to look his questioner in the eye.

She was a Moth of middle-young years with a severe face, and two others came in behind her. One of them was a young scribe with a scroll, and the other a woman bearing a staff, which identified her to Achaeos as a guard, although the Wasps present would not have guessed it. He supposed that the Wasps must have banned the carrying of weapons inside Tharn, but a staff was beneath their notice.

‘I understand you to be a Rekef agent,’ began their leader, with enough questioning in her tone for him to know that he had not been condemned out of hand. The presence of the doctors should already have told him that, but he was taking nothing for granted. Even now he did not know whether it was simply his imagined link to the conquering Empire that protected him from his own people’s wrath.

‘Is that all you understand?’ he asked her. His voice was weak, and he kept it soft, making her strain to hear his words. At this point, words were all he had to fight with.

‘You are Achaeos,’ she noted, ‘you didn’t leave here in glory. In fact you nearly did not leave here at all. During this last year you have progressed from uninspired student to positive maverick – and now here you are.’

He kept his feelings from his face. ‘Is a man not allowed to come home? I may have dallied with exile, but I do not believe a sentence of exile was ever passed.’

She glanced backwards, but not at her companions, so he knew that they were being overheard by another – one of the Skryres he guessed – who might be anywhere in Tharn.

‘There are no Wasps guarding the door,’ she said, ‘so we speak only before our own people. Or at least my own people. Do you really still claim the Moths of Tharn as yours?’

‘I do.’

‘Then you are no Rekef, or Wasp agent.’

‘Well deduced.’

If she felt he was baiting her, she gave no sign of it. They faced each other without expression. ‘Our situation here is currently delicate. We do not wish some agitator appearing in the halls of Tharn, spreading confusion.’

‘You would rather remain slaves?’

‘It takes more than a single glance to truly tell the master from the slave.’

That made him pause. Again she was unreadable but there had been something in her tone, in that simple platitude, to suggest that there was more going on here than he had thought.

He narrowed his eyes as she glanced over her shoulder again. It was a bad habit of hers and there was no need for it. It suggested someone who had spent a long time away from her own people. But where? And the answer was quick to suggest itself. She has been in the Empire, surely. What is going on here?

It was not that she was simply being observed, either. She must be receiving instructions from a Skryre and they did not sit well with her. Her expression was beginning to tell him things.

‘I am Xaraea,’ she announced suddenly.

He held on to that for a moment, feeling his heart leap, for his people did not give up their names easily. It was a sign of status: to know a name gave you power. To be given a name made you at least an equal. That could only mean he had been let into something.

‘What is happening here?’ he asked her.

‘You know much of what passes in the Lowlands?’

‘I know some of it.’

She considered him. ‘You are not strong enough yet to leave your bed.’

‘I am stronger than I was, but no.’

‘But later you will be, and there is someone you must meet.’

He stared at her suspiciously. ‘And who would that be?’

At last her mouth twisted into a slight smile. ‘Who else but our new master, the governor of Tharn?’

Che paused at the doorway of Thalric’s room, suddenly doubting herself. Surely there must be some other option, but they had shooed her out of Achaeos’ sick-room with venomous looks and mutterings about their Hated Enemy.

The corridors of Tharn had never been friendly, save when Achaeos had been beside her. Even with her Art-given sight, which could pierce the darkness the Moths habitually lived in, it was a world of hostile gazes, pointedly turned backs, and lantern-bearing Wasp soldiers who stared suspiciously at her. It was enough to make her wish she could not see it all.

She had spent some time at an exterior window, watching the rain lash down over the landing strip where the Cleaver was almost lost amongst a dozen imperial flying machines. The rain had made her unhappy. She had found herself yearning to fly, as she had done for the first time, when last she was here.

And so here she was, hand poised to knock on… what? The Moths had few doors, only arches and more arches, so that every room was part of a labyrinth of chambers that went back and back further into the mountain, all of them as chill as the weather outside. What doors they had were hidden screens and secret panels in the stone, which no stranger would guess were there. The Moths never seemed to notice the cold either, these strange people who otherwise seemed so frail. She had seen imperial soldiers well wrapped up in scarves and greatcoats, their breath steaming as they complained to each other, whilst Moth servants padded past them in light tunics and sandals.

She heard a shuffling noise from inside, a shadow cast over the shifting light that spilled out of the room, and there he was in the doorway: Thalric, in his banded armour still, a Wasp amongst his own people once more.

This was a mistake, she decided. The strange thing was that he seemed to think so, too. His expression, on finding her there, was bitter, almost resigned.