‘If I live? You may not have heard, but we Beetles are tough.’

‘Tomorrow one of us will most certainly die,’ he said simply. ‘It is the Empire’s way.’

Most of the slaves woke at dawn, from long habit. Those who did not, exhausted from the previous day, were allowed a single whip-crack in which to wake themselves. After that the whip itself came down.

The dawn had woken Salma, and he shook Che into wakefulness before the slavers could get round to her. The prisoners were being hauled up and roped together again for walking. He looked about him, trying to gauge if this was their chance to make a break for it, but there were too many slavers posted all about. He might have given it a try, on his own: a lightning strike to get a knife in his hands, to cut his bonds and into the air. He was not optimistic about his chances, though, and Che would never make it.

Salma had never been the responsible type: he had always taken being a prince frivolously. This had given him a light-hearted outlook on life. At home he had played the games of court, wooed young women or sparred and flown with his peers. Even when war and the Empire had come to the eastern principalities, he had not taken it seriously enough.

Thereafter he had been sent to study at Collegium, where Stenwold had broached to him the subject of the Empire. It had all still seemed a game, a bit of excitement for him to intersperse amongst his studies and casual seductions. Of course the Wasps were his enemies, but that was all so far, far away.

In the Lowlands, though, they had developed so many wondrous means of transport, so that same far away could become here very quickly indeed. Salma found himself learning all about responsibility now.

‘Come on.’ He helped Che stand up, and a blank-helmed slaver tied them together and set them moving. Back in Collegium Salma had always found Che tremendously amusing, in a fond way, of course: how she bustled about and was always so serious about everything. Her studies, her ethics, her desperate attempts to break into the Ancestor Art. Everything was a crisis on which her personal world hinged. Privately he had found such endeavours hilarious, just as so much else of Beetle society appeared risible to him.

Now here she was, tied to him by three feet of rope, and he felt such a burden of responsibility for her that he wanted to thrust her behind him and strike out at any Wasp who even looked at her. This emotion surprised him: he did not know where it came from. He had never seen Che as a candidate for one of his idle conquests. Nor was it because he felt a responsibility to Stenwold to keep his niece safe. This was something entirely new: he wanted to keep her safe because she was all he had.

And thinking about her safety allowed him to ignore the ignominy of his own bondage.

The slaves had been lined up now in a single row and everyone was clearly waiting for something to happen. It came when one of the slavers removed his black-and-gold helm, revealing heavy-jawed features and a shaven scalp. When he spoke, his voice identified him as Brutan, their leader.

‘You are all slaves!’ he shouted at them.

Che glanced off to one side at Thalric and his soldiers, who were studiously ignoring what was going on. Instantly a whip cracked towards her, sending her reeling into Salma.

‘Look at me, you bitch!’ Brutan bellowed, the cords of his neck standing out. ‘Slaves look at their masters when they’re spoken to. Not in the eye, but you look!’ He cracked his whip again. ‘You are all slaves!’ he repeated. ‘Worse, you are all escaped slaves, slaves twice over. That makes you lowest of all slaves!’ Brutan was glaring at them all with an abiding and personal loathing, enough to make his eyes bulge and veins throb in his forehead. ‘You are the worst kind of scum because you have made the Empire waste my precious time in fetching you back!’ he almost screamed. ‘I only wish the Empire had more slaves to spare because then I would have the lot of you executed. However, a lesson must now be taught, so that you do not try wasting any more of my or the Empire’s time.’

He stalked forward, proceeding to one end of the line, then strode along it, looking at each face in turn. ‘The only thing left now is to make my choice.’

His progress past them was agonizingly slow. He stopped often, while each slave stared down at his own feet. Many were shaking and somewhere down the line someone was weeping in desperate sobs that no amount of effort could muffle.

Brutan stopped in front of the lanky, sallow man, considering. He was now only a few bodies down the line from Salma and Che. He moved on, passing a Beetle-kinden, then the female Ant that Che had spoken to last night. He stopped again.

‘Commonwealer,’ he remarked. ‘Slavery too good for your kind, is it?’

Salma stared at his feet and said nothing.

‘I’ve got a villa in Dras Hesha, boy. You know where that is?’ And when Salma said nothing, he shrieked, ‘Slaves answer their masters! Do you know where that is?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Salma said quietly. ‘Yes, master.’

‘I keep my villa well stocked, boy. In fact I’ve got a Dragonfly girl there: she could just about be your sister.’ He watched carefully, his eyes flicking about Salma’s bowed face, waiting for the first rebel spark. The words passed the Dragonfly by, though. He felt them strike him, strike where his pride was and then course to either side like the waters of a stream. His responsibility protected him. He could not indulge in mere pride, now he had Che to look after.

Brutan’s lip curled in disgust, and he passed on down the line of prisoners.

At the very end he turned suddenly and pointed with the handle of his whip. ‘You!’ It was one of the Ant-kinden he had selected. Instantly the man braced himself to resist but a pair of slavers descended on him from behind. One of them struck him a glancing blow with a club and then they had cut him free and were grappling him away from the rest.

‘Don’t look,’ said Salma in Che’s ear and she frowned at him.

‘I’ve seen death before.’ She was so desperate to put on a brave face.

‘Not this death. Don’t look.’ Salma knew what was coming. It had been mentioned in dispatches from the war front: the favoured Wasp way of execution, especially for their own.

Two of the slavers carried long spears, tipped at each end with a skewer-like point, and with a crosspiece halfway down, like a hunting spear. Che stubbornly watched them as the first spear was firmly grounded in the earth at an angle, and it was only when the slave was dragged towards it, and she understood, that she closed her eyes and turned her head away. Then all she had were the sounds, the hideous shrieks of the man that went on and on, weaker and weaker.

And when she opened her eyes, he was still alive, only just, too weak for any further sound. He hung off the crossed spears that passed through his body, emerging under the armpit to lance into his spread arms so that he was splayed like an unattended puppet. She hoped, she fervently hoped, that he would die swiftly. It was all the hope she could offer him.

She had believed that she was so special, and that Salma was special, considering how much trouble Thalric had gone to to track them down. And yet here they were, and how close had Salma been to providing that grotesque example?

‘All right!’ Brutan bellowed, as the line of slaves was made whole again. ‘The Captain wants to leave now. Time for you to start moving!’

Even before the slaves could begin stirring, the whips were in motion. To the east their path would take them beyond the shadowy fastnesses of the Darakyon Forest, through hill country and off all the maps, into the Empire itself.

Stenwold had been bracing himself against all manner of things recently, but he was not prepared for the sheer onslaught of memories on seeing Tisamon seated at the usual table at the Taverna Egelitara. It had been their old gathering place, of course, where they had always met in Helleron, all five of them together. The place was still here after all those years, though the family that owned it had changed generations in that time. And there was Tisamon himself, leaning back in his chair at the corner table outside the taverna, as though any moment Marius or Atryssa might cross the square to greet him.