‘You’ll be paid,’ Thalric said, ‘but could you impersonate any of them? Did you get a good enough look?’

‘It would be by appearance only,’ said Scylis. ‘I didn’t speak long enough to get to know them. Not like I did with Bolwyn.’

Thalric considered Bolwyn. He had no doubt that Scylis had questioned him most persuasively, before the man’s death, in order to assume that role. He felt no regrets about him. It was for the Empire.

‘It may yet come to that,’ he told the shadow. ‘In the meantime, here is your price.’ A bag of coins, gold Helleron Centrals, clinked on the floor. ‘I’ll have work for you soon enough. Word by the usual route.’

‘A pleasure as always, Major Thalric,’ came Scylis’s reply.

‘Captain Thalric,’ the Wasp corrected.

‘Come now, would you respect me if I could be fooled by your games? We have danced, you and I, and I know you.’

A characteristic Spider expression, and Thalric decided it was genuine, rather than a part the man was playing.

‘You know me, do you?’

‘I know your subordinates fear you, which is no strange thing in an officer, but your superiors fear you even more. Shall I utter the dreaded name and see what it conjures?’

‘Best you don’t,’ Thalric advised, as it came unbidden into his mind: Rekef. The army held a blade to the throat of the world, but he stood with his blade at the throat of the army, for the Emperor would tolerate no resistance, within or without. ‘Much more talk of that, Scylis, and even you might outlive your usefulness.’

Scylis made a dismissive sound, but he obviously gave some weight to the warning, because he changed the subject smoothly. ‘Did your men tell you about the Spider-kinden duellist? Quite the fencer to watch.’

Thalric nodded. ‘Yes they’re a proper bag of surprises.’ He stood up, feeling abruptly weary. Scylis always seemed to be mocking him, and he wished that he had some other agent who could do what this man appeared to be able to do, however it was that he managed it. ‘If you come across any information, any leads, you know I’ll pay for it,’ he said, as he left the room.

For the Empire. That was the rod at his core. No matter how much Helleron might tempt him with its decadent, delectable pleasures, when it was for the Empire he put all that aside and knew neither regret, worry nor fear. He was not a bad man, in his own estimation. No, he was a loyal man, and for an imperial citizen that was the crowning virtue. When the order had come to him, during the last war, to kill the three infant children of Prince Felise Dael, he had carried the knife himself to end the noble line, and known no remorse.

This thought stopped him on the stairs, for he had children himself, hundreds of miles away, whom he had barely ever seen since they were born. A wife he no longer wrote to. The fear of his underlings and the loathing of his superiors. Coded orders on scrolls scheduled for burning.

Their mother had been there, when he killed those three children, held restrained between two of his men. It was not that he had forced her to watch, simply that she had been in the nursery when he arrived. Standing on the stairs in the Grain Shipment Taverna he found that he wished she had been taken away.

For the Empire. It made him feel stronger, just saying the words to himself, but sometimes he felt as though he was turning into something like Scylis: masks and masks and masks, until he could hold them all up before him, and not know which was truly his own face.

Tynisa awoke slowly, but cautiously. She was somewhere she did not recognize. She could feel it from the bed, the sounds around her, the very smell. It could mean many things, from a kidnap to a successful liaison. She stayed quite still, allowing herself to come to without the world becoming aware of it.

A lumpy straw mattress and a sour, stale smell. If this was a liaison then she was certainly slumming it.

Bolwyn’s betrayal! It was all she could do not to open her eyes, to leap off the mattress. Bolwyn’s betrayal, then dashing for the alley mouth, two dead Wasps on her slope-shouldered conscience that seemed to be able to shrug them off so easily, but where was she now?

Her head ached abominably. She must have struck it on something.

She had got out into the street. More Wasps had been coming, cutting furrows through the crowd. Her bloody sword had been like a talisman to clear the way for her. She had tried to cut her way back, find Che and Salma, but there were Wasps and town militia approaching, and she had been driven further and further.

She had been exhausted. She had run and run and Helleron had always been there. In the end she had been running to escape the city itself, and failed.

It had consumed her.

So, she was in its bowels. With the most careful of movements, eyes still tight shut, she felt for her blade. Gone. She wore nothing but a shift. Where had she run to? Her mind simply did not have the answers.

It was time. She finally opened her eyes.

On a filthy mattress, covered by a stained sheet, in some tiny room with one slit window.

There was a chair across from her, near the doorless doorway. A small man was dozing in it, and carelessly slung over its back-

She was on her feet before she could stop herself, but silently, silent as her kind could be. In two steps she was within reach, and she had the hilt in her hand. She slid it from its scabbard.

That woke him, the whisper of steel on leather beside his ear. Even as he jumped she had the blade beneath his chin, drawing a bead of blood as he started. He was a halfbreed, she saw, looked like Beetle and Fly-kinden in there and perhaps more. He stood very still. He only had a knife himself but kept his hands far from it as if to reassure her.

‘Where am I?’ she hissed.

‘Malia’s house,’ he croaked, eyes flicking from her to the blade.

‘And who’s Malia that I should know her?’

‘She’s my chief. She’s important. You don’t mess with her.’ His voice shook as he said it, though. She smiled cruelly.

‘Well maybe I want to give this Malia a message. Maybe you’re the message, what do you think? So tell me something useful.’

‘I – I – I – I don’t know. What do you-? You were just brought in. I don’t know. I just got told to watch you,’ he stammered.

‘Why?’

A woman’s voice, from the doorway: ‘Why talk to the little finger when the face is here?’

Tynisa jumped back, rapier extended in a duellist’s guard. The newcomer was a woman of beyond middle years, greying, but lean and solidly built. She wore the under- and over-robes that the Helleren favoured, but she was Ant-kinden and still retained that race’s warrior stance. Her shortsword stayed in its sheath. Given the confidence in her, it was obviously a pointed statement.

Tynisa slowly lowered the blade until the tip was close to the floor. She could bring it up at a moment’s notice, but for now she wanted to talk. ‘And you’re Malia?’

‘That I am.’ The woman surveyed her dispassionately. ‘You bounced back quickly, child.’ Her voice still had a little of the Ant formality about it.

‘I’m no child.’

‘That remains to be seen. You owe me.’

‘For bed and board?’ Tynisa said contemptuously. ‘What, didn’t you have any stables you could sling me in?’

A quirk at the corner of Malia’s mouth. ‘This is Helleron. Here this is luxury accommodation. You owe me because you killed one of my people.’

‘When?’ Tynisa grasped at those parts of the previous day that still eluded her. ‘When did I?’ Is she with the Empire?

‘Oh, he went for you first, but that makes no difference.’ Malia folded her arms across her chest. ‘He always was a fool, and when you ran in, sword all red, he clearly decided you were for target practice.’

A thought, an image, the scattered shards of the previous day now drifting ever closer. A man pointing a short-bow at her, letting loose an arrow. It had passed across her back, ruffling her cloak, and she had gone for him. She had been moving without thought by then, reflex to reflex.