It was well before dawn but General Malkan had his slaves dress him in his full armour. This was a state occasion, he decided. He would be the representative of the Empire speaking with a foreign power, even a captured and humbled one, so it would do to look the part. He had unpacked his suit of partial plate mail, enamelled black and edged with gold, to go over the lightweight hauberk of fine chain made to his personal specifications by the Beetle smiths of Sonn. He had his best sword, with the gilded pommel, buckled to his belt, and held his helm beneath his arm. After all, there was no shame in appearing gracious in victory.

‘Have the man brought in,’ he instructed, once the last buckle had been tightened. The armour was well made enough that its weight barely slowed him, distributed evenly across his shoulders as though it was nothing more than a scout’s light brigandine. His slaves retreated from his tent without needing any order, and two soldiers then marched in with the captive.

Malkan studied him: a Commonwealer, which confirmed the rumours and gave cause for thought. He was a young man, with his kind’s slender build and a steady gaze despite the broad bruise spreading across half of his face. His hands were bound behind him, but he stood straight and tall like a visiting officer come to inspect the troops. Malkan decided that in other circumstances he might have liked this man. As it was, he did not have that luxury.

‘So you’re the one they call the… what is it? The “Wasted Prince”?’

‘I can’t vouch for what your people call me,’ Salma replied. He had found a curious calm within him, now his run of fortune was finally at an end. Had he not been here before, in the custody of the Wasps? Of course he had, and worse, too. He had even died outside the walls of Tark, had he not? Then all this was just borrowed time. It was all credit he had accrued with the world, and if the world now called on him to pay his debts, how could he complain? ‘You are General Malkan, I take it.’

The Wasp general made the smallest nod but Salma, looking him in the eyes, saw the faintest disquiet there, a tiny worm gnawing at the man’s contentment.

‘You have a name?’ Malkan asked him.

‘Prince Minor Salme Dien, enforcedly at your service,’ Salma informed him, managing a moderately accomplished bow.

‘You really are a prince, then.’ Malkan had witnessed the last convulsions of the Twelve-Year War, for as the youngest general of the Empire, most of that glorious, costly campaign had preceded him. He recognized the Commonwealer title, though. ‘Renegade, are you, then? Exiled?’

The suspicion already in Salma’s mind began to solidify. ‘Not at all, General. Still a proud son of the Commonweal, I’m afraid.’

Malkan regarded him without expression. ‘A little out of your way, aren’t you?’

‘We go where the Monarch commands.’

‘I don’t believe your Monarch has ever heard of the city of Sarn. I don’t believe it’s even marked on the Commonwealer maps.’

Salma was staring straight into the man’s eyes, and he saw that small flicker again. He’s here in person talking to me, and he’s got up as gaudy as a Spider whore, but he’s not telling me how wonderful his Empire is and how defeated I am. Somehow I’ve thrown him off his course. He took a deep breath and smiled casually, as though he and the Wasp were merely standing in Collegium debating philosophy. ‘Mercers are always allowed a little initiative, General, in how we go about fulfilling our orders.’

The moment’s pause told Salma that the lie, the outright abject lie, had registered. Malkan obviously knew of the Mercers, and imagined them, no doubt, as some kind of Dragonfly Rekef.

‘Well, perhaps I should send your head back to your Monarch, to show him how he has failed,’ Malkan declared and, without that pause before, he would have sounded entirely confident.

‘What failure would that be?’ Salma asked him.

‘Your “Landsarmy” is scattered and mostly slain,’ Malkan replied. Salma knew that he must have flinched at that news, for he saw his reaction mirrored in the other man’s eyes. ‘I have you, to do with as I wish, to enslave or kill or send to the Emperor himself as a trophy. You have failed.’

‘But you were speaking of the Monarch, not of myself.’ Salma kept his voice steady, hoping that Malkan was painting the situation darker than it really was. ‘The protection of the Lowlands from imperial aggression is not a task to be entrusted to only one man.’

Malkan stopped, again just for a moment, but Salma noticed it. The thought of a dozen, a score, a hundred Mercers, infiltrating the Lowlands, raising scrap-armies as Salma had done – the tactical implications unfolded in Malkan’s mind.

If I can achieve nothing else now, let me crack his confidence. Words were all Salma had left in the way of weapons. He would not spare them.

‘Well, we shall question you at leisure about whatever comrades you have,’ Malkan decided. ‘Being a Commonwealer, you will be unfamiliar with our methods of questioning, so I shall have my artificers introduce you.’

Beneath Salma’s feet, the earth shifted slightly, very slightly. He had only soft shoes on, and most likely Malkan would have felt nothing through the soles of his armoured boots. Behind his back, Salma flexed his fingers. ‘General?’

‘You have some other vague threat for me?’ Malkan asked him.

Salma’s thumb-claws flicked out, digging into the ropes about his wrists. The angle was awkward, but he drove them in as hard as he could. ‘You forget two things.’

‘Do I, now?’ Malkan asked, irritated, but paused for just a moment more. ‘And what would they be?’

‘You will have to discover that for yourself,’ Salma said, every bit the picture of the mysterious Commonwealer, and when Malkan signalled for the two guards to take him, he concentrated all his strength into his arms, his hands and his thumbs, and flexed them.

The rope sheared and his hands sprang free, just as the whole of the earth floor within the tent bucked once and then burst open.

General Malkan was thrown off-balance, but already grabbing for his sword’s hilt as the ground split. A monstrous form hauled its broad-shouldered bulk out of the ground, and for a moment, in the explosion of dust, it was impossible to see just what it was. The two guards that Malkan had kept to hand did not need to know precisely what was attacking their general, though. One was already raising a hand towards Salma even as the ropes gave way. The other drew his sword and threw himself forwards with a kind of blind courage, not risking a sting-shot with Malkan so close.

It was Morleyr, of course. Morleyr the Auxillian deserter whose squad Salma had talked into defecting. Morleyr the Mole Cricket-kinden giant who could dig through the earth with his bare hands.

His hands were not bare now, though. The soldier that rushed at him, into the cloud of dust, met the upswing of a mace-blow intended for Malkan. Salma heard bones snap as its heavy iron head struck the man through the ribs. Salma was already moving, casting himself to the left as the crackling bolt of energy seared past, and then jabbing with his thumbs, going for the throat but tearing a bloody line across the soldier’s face instead as he reeled back.

Malkan’s sword was now clear but there were others emerging after Morleyr, coughing and choking but armed with shortswords and daggers. They were a handful of Salma’s people dragging themselves out of the darkness…

No, not dark, for there was light down there. Salma’s chest contracted at even the brief glimpse he had of it.

No! Not here! He lunged forwards, got a hand about the soldier’s sword-wrist, trying to prise the weapon free. The man backed out of the tent into the night, stumbling through the flap, colliding with another man who rushed in and just managed to say, ‘General Malkan-’ before he was bowled over. The soldier Salma was grappling with tripped, and the contested sword was driven deep into his chest as Salma fell on top of him.