Tisamon wore no more armour than his arming jacket, that had seen so many deaths and yet bore so few scars or scratches. He had found a similar garment for Tynisa, buckling it for her up the side with care, awl-punching new holes in the straps where they were needed so as to fit her slender frame. Stenwold looked at his adopted daughter, at Tisamon’s daughter, and knew that she had passed out of his hands. Not into her father’s but into her own. She was steering her own course in the world from now on.

And then there was Cheerwell, his niece, his flesh and blood, and in the time that the Wasps had taken her from him, she had grown up too. She stood by Scuto, wearing artificer’s armour like her uncle, and with a toolstrip on one hip balancing the sword on the other. She buckled a leather helmet on, protective goggles riding high on her forehead, and he barely recognized her.

Behind them the mobile remnant of Scuto’s agents was ready. Stenwold knew Balkus well enough: the Ant was a mercenary rather than a loyal agent but he owed Scuto and he took his debt of honour seriously. Then there was Rakka, whose right hand had been forfeit to imperial justice and who had not forgotten or forgiven. Sperra the Fly carried her crossbow and a kit of bandages and salves, in case the chance came to use them. Beyond her there were a grab-bag of Beetles, Flies, Ant-kinden and one halfbreed, Scuto’s last surviving agents from the city, now drawn together here for safe keeping. They bore crossbows, swords, grenades and a piecemeal approach to armour. One of the Beetle-kinden had a blunderbow, its flared mouth already loaded with shrapnel. Another wore most of a suit of sentinel plate, massively bulked with metal, and carried a great poleaxe late of the city guard armouries. These were not soldiers, but they had as much skirmishing experience as any Wasp regular.

‘I think we’re ready, chief,’ Scuto said quietly.

Collegium stands or falls on what we do today.

‘Let’s move out,’ Stenwold said.

They were close enough to the rail works to hear the hammering of the industrious engines that were still producing the track, and the shunting and grinding of the automotives that shipped it down the line, ever narrowing the gap between the works begun in Collegium and those started here. How many yards were yet to cover? Each hour whittled that intervening distance away. The launching of the Pride’s pirated maiden voyage could be tomorrow or the day after.

The Pride itself was kept apart from such gross scurryings. It was aloof from mere industry. When it moved, it would make its first run from Helleron to Collegium and revolutionize the world. Progress would be advanced, with all the virtues and vices that entailed.

And we are here to stop it. The idea still seemed mad to Stenwold, but he had come to this insanity through ineluctable logic.

The Pride sat on its sidelined rails under a great awning that shielded it from what mild ill weather the season might throw at it. A lesser engine might be consigned to a shed but the Pride was too great and grand, and its engineers required its flanks bared to bring their machines close enough to service her. She was a new breed, hulking and hammer-headed at the front, but capped with silver worked into beautiful and ornate designs, as though she were some great bludgeoning weapon made for ceremonial purposes. Behind that solid nose was the engine itself, the ‘lightning engine’. Stenwold had never seen one, and knew nothing about them. He had an uncomfortable feeling that Scuto was little better informed but it would be the Thorn Bug’s work to destroy it, either by explosives or by simply overcharging and detonating the engine itself. It was a truly vast piece of engineering, twenty feet in length, its slab-like sides wormed through with ducts and pipes, coils and twisting funnels. A five-foot rod stood proud of the roof, glittering slightly in the darkness beneath the vast awning. Behind that monumental engine was the engineer’s cab itself. Where more primitive devices would have, say, a wood-burning furnace for steam power, Stenwold could not even guess what controls and fail-safes a lightning engine would require.

There was no sign of a watch, no sign of a guard. They had come south of the engine yard to get the best look, but even then it was a difficult prospect. The yard was a pit dug ten feet down and more than ten times that across. There were spoil heaps, tool sheds and lesser engines scattered around it. A dozen sentries could be concealed there.

Stenwold knew that nobody would move and nothing would happen until he gave the word and, once he gave it, the entire business would unfold without any chance for him to stop it or change its direction. It would leave his hands like some apprentice artificer’s flying machine, and whether it flew or fell would not be his to determine.

He found that, at this stage, he could not bring himself to give the word.

And then Sperra hissed ‘’Ware above! I hear fliers!’

The whole band of them scattered, crossbows dragged up towards the dark sky, but a moment later it was Che’s voice saying, ‘Calm! Quiet! It’s Achaeos.’

They clustered again, and saw the first shape come down a little way away. There was a waxing moon that gave a wan light and there were lights enough across the engine yard behind them, but even then it took Stenwold a moment to pick Achaeos out of the shadows.

He was about to go to greet the Moth when the other figures came down, and he stood, paralysed for a moment with the fear of betrayal, and then with sudden hope.

There were at least half a dozen other Moths, all with bows in hand, and a brace of Fly-kinden wearing cut-down versions of the Moths’ hooded garb. There were two Mantis-kinden as well, male and female in studded armour, as tall and arch as Tisamon ever was. There was a Dragonfly maiden with a longbow, and a Grasshopper-kinden with a pair of long daggers glittering in his hands. All of them were in shades of grey, mottled and patched so that, between the moonlight and the shadows, they might stand in the open before wide eyes and yet be near invisible.

‘Hammer and tongs,’ Stenwold said, some small piece of the weight on him lifting at the sight. ‘Your Skryres saw the light then? Or the darkness, however you want.’

Che pushed past him to fling her arms round Achaeos, and then suddenly looked back at Stenwold guiltily, but at that moment he could not care.

‘When I arrived back at Tharn, these men and women were already waiting for me,’ Achaeos said, one arm about Che. Even he sounded a little awed by it. ‘I now find myself their captain. The Skryres… deliberate, still… Tharn has as yet taken no stance on the Empire.’

‘Then who are these?’ Stenwold asked, and then the word welled unbidden in his mind. ‘Arcanum…?’

Achaeos glanced back at his cohort. ‘They have said nothing but that they will fight the Wasps, Master Maker. Some Skryre has clearly made a personal decision on this, and called upon his or her own agents. Yes, they are Arcanum, Master Maker, and they are with you. For this one task only, Stenwold Maker, they are with you.’

‘So how’re we going to do this?’ Scuto asked, still sizing up the newcomers.

‘We have scouted this place before,’ Achaeos said. ‘It has been guarded, always. Now the Helleren guards are gone.’

‘Easier for us, surely,’ said Balkus from over Scuto’s shoulder.

‘No, for it means our coming is known,’ Achaeos said.

Stenwold had to agree. ‘All killed or bought off, or perhaps they were withdrawn on some magnate’s orders, some merchant-lord bought by the Empire. So where are the Wasps, Achaeos?’

‘There are some inside the machine itself,’ the Moth explained. ‘And we have also seen four sentries hidden about this place. We think there are more and that this is a trap.’