Finally the game was about to begin. Nero had spent the last two days urging people into position by sheer force of will. Jemeyn and Wen, and the other Solarnese who were willing to take up arms, were split into bands of ten and twenty now within a quick dash of the square. Odyssa and her Scorpion mercenaries were on ships out in the bay, equipped with a telescope and a Solarnese artificer to use it, closely watching Galand Square for the signal. Somewhere out across the waters, Taki and the other free pilots were waiting. The frustration in seeing none of it was maddening.

Nero, old boy, you’re only an artist. What are you doing starting revolutions?

Then there was Cesta, of course, who must already be lurking somewhere close, ready for whatever he intended to do to light the fuse here. A blade thrown from a good distance was Nero’s guess, but first there would have to be the right target.

By now there were soldiers lining the square, marching forth with black and yellow pennants on their lances. Nero shifted his balance on the statue, resisting the urge to glance back towards the sea (were there black dots he could see, in the distance over it?) or to check that his dagger could be easily drawn through the buttons of his breeches. The incoming crowd, hustled together by roving Wasp soldiers to witness the new governor’s inauguration, had already been searched for blades, but few Wasps were diligent enough to feel up the inside of a Fly-kinden man’s thighs, especially one as grim-looking as Nero.

The mood in the square was very quiet. Some spoke together in low voices, but many simply stared up at the imposing balcony or at the encircling soldiers. They were not taking their subjugation well, and today would be either kill or cure. Nero was willing to bet that there were more than a few hidden weapons among the crowd. The Wasps had not won any great love amongst the people here, nor was Nero the only player whose pieces were out of sight. Only the day before, a third of the Solarno garrison had simply packed up and marched north again. Rumour said that the siege of the Spider-kinden city of Seldis was dragging, despite the Empire’s mechanical might. Nero himself knew how the Spider-kinden dealt with sieges: assassination, mass poisonings, sabotage, infiltration and incitement, and all the time there would be mercenaries and Spider levies gathering to the south, along the Silk Road. The news had helped stoke the smoulder that was Solarno and he reckoned it was all about to catch ablaze.

Myna all over again. But of course he had not been there at Myna when the gates came down. He had carefully weighed up the odds, and then told them – Stenwold and Tisamon and Marius – that he wasn’t game for it. After all, Fly-kinden were not noted for their warlike tendencies. It was the nature of his small kinden to bend before the storm. That was why they fitted in so well, why they had settled everywhere from Collegium to the Ant city-states and the heart of the Empire. But here in Solarno he had met a different breed of them: fighting Fly-kinden amongst the free pilots. One in particular, actually.

All this for a pretty face. But it was a very pretty face, and a lively manner, and though she was young enough to be his daughter, still he had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. I am, let’s be honest here, too old for all of this, so if I’m going to start playing the young man in going to war, why not play him elsewhere too?

The thought put a smile on his face, but it vanished as the governor appeared.

There were abruptly a dozen Wasp officers up there on the balcony, looking interchangeable in their armour and peering down at the resentful mass of their new subjects with disdain. Amongst them, only the governor had dressed for the occasion. Over his banded hauberk he wore open-fronted robes of black with gold trim, and from somewhere, doubtless some pillaged loot of a Solarnese Aristos, he had found himself a golden circlet.

Drama, Nero thought. I can’t deny that the man has drama. He then realized that he did not even know the governor-to-be’s name. But you shouldn’t be wearing that crown just yet…

The governor was a broad-shouldered man, with greying hair, an imperial colonel whose loyal service had earned him this prestigious post. He went over to grip the balustrade, visibly scowling down at the brooding Solarnese below. His officers stood back, giving him the moment. Was this because they respected him as a commander, or because they did not want to draw the ire of the natives onto themselves? Nero shifted his balance again, aware of the dagger strapped to his thigh as though it were scorching him. The crowd had gone quite quiet, even the murmur of private thoughts expressed to a neighbour had ceased. Only the pounding surf of the Exalsee and the occasional clink of a soldier’s armour broke the silence.

As the governor opened his mouth to speak, Cesta was magically there.

Nero never noticed whether he had leapt from a neighbouring building, or flew there, or even pushed his way through from the interior of the Demarial house, but he was suddenly there, dressed in the loose white garments of a Solarnese citizen and cutting the governor’s throat in public. Perhaps it was the world’s most witnessed assassination. Nero felt his jaw drop, and a shock eddied through the crowd as if recoiling away from the spray of blood that spattered the front rows of those watching like a benediction.

In his artist’s heart, Nero yearned to capture that tableau: the colonel – never now to truly be the governor – arched back, the glitter of red hanging in the air, the lean man of uncertain race poised beside him on the balcony rail, the utter blank shock of the officers behind. Even as he appreciated it, the moment was gone, to be succeeded by the next.

With the governor’s blood spotted across his pale clothing Cesta cried out ‘Solarno!’ and his hands sprang alive with metal, hurling his blades even as the shocked sentinels lumbered torwards him. Nero saw two men fall back, all their weight of armour no protection against a narrow dart through the eyeslit. A lance drove for the assassin, but he used it as a step to cast himself upwards and forwards, towards the retreating officers. Nero saw a scatter of sting-blasts explode around Cesta, at least one of which struck down a Wasp major by mistake, and then the assassin was amongst them. His blades sprang from his hands like steel rain, but it was the hands themselves that dealt death. Open, empty hands, yet some Art of Cesta’s lost kinden made them killing things, passing through armour without a mark, slicing flesh like razors.

The crowd took over at that point. No swords but a sea of daggers, walking sticks or Art-bladed fists, and abruptly they were rushing the cordon of soldiers around them. The Wasp-kinden still possessed lances and stings, and the mob in Galand Square fell back from them and their wall of steel points, but a moment later Jemeyn and Wen, and all the others, had appeared at all the exits to the Square and immediately the Wasps were a thin line of men fighting on two fronts.

And word has gone to the garrison already, Nero knew. More soldiers are coming, but let’s hope they aren’t the only ones.

The fighting was all around him now and, though he had dragged his dagger out of concealment, he stayed clinging to the statue’s stone head. The front doors of the Demarial house burst open and a wedge of imperial heavy infantry tore out into the crowd; just as the Wasp cordon on the east side of the square disintegrated entirely, and whole bundles of Solarnese curved swords were passed over into waiting hands – and still Nero had eyes only for Cesta.

Over half the Wasp officers were dead now, and most of the rest retreating into the house, frantic to get away from this madman and his bloody hands, but Nero was there to see the sentinel’s lance drive into the assassin’s back, finding a gap that no amount of luck or skill could quite cover. Cesta was slammed into the doorway and, even as he convulsed on the pike’s end, his hand flicked out a knife that snapped the sentinel’s head back, collapsing him to his knees.