Stenwold and Totho had sat down to wait for dawn, while the Darakyon creaked and rasped about them, lightless and bitterly cold. The time they had spent there, unable to sleep, nerves constantly fraying at each groan and snap, had seemed too long to possibly fit inside only one night.

Then it had come to them. They had heard it, the slow, careful approach of something very large. There had been the rattle of Totho trying to load his crossbow blind, and Stenwold had taken up his sword, hopeless in the darkness. I do not believe in Tisamon’s folk tales, he had told himself, but traitor logic had grinned at him and said, Why think of ghosts at all? There are many things belonging to the material world that can kill a man. In his mind’s eye he had envisaged that stealthy approach as a mantis, an insect ten feet long with huge night-seeing eyes and neatly folded killing arms. He had held out his sword invisibly before him, hearing Totho’s fumbling grow increasingly desperate and hearing the thing, whatever it was, grow closer.

They had run, the pair of them. In the same moment, as if by agreement, they had bolted, and the clearing was suddenly permeable again. They had bolted through briars and needling thorns and not stopped, and they had run until, without warning, there were no trees around them and they were half a mile east of their original camp. They had then spent the scant time before dawn finding the automotive again.

‘It’s just a wood,’ he said, voice sounding hollow to his own ears. ‘In the dark, the imagination will always run riot. We were in no real danger, two armed men. It’s Achaeos I’m worried about.’

‘He might just have absconded,’ Totho said darkly. ‘This isn’t his fight.’

‘When he comes back…’ Stenwold said, and paused. ‘When he comes back, because if he doesn’t we may have to make a different choice, we have to make a decision. We don’t know whether Che and Salma are being held at Asta, or whether Achaeos now is, if things have gone really badly, or whether they’ve already gone east, deeper into the Empire. If they’re being kept apart from other prisoners, well, that could prove good or bad.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Totho.

‘I mean that it probably suggests they’ve been set aside for questioning,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m sorry. It could just mean they’re being given special treatment, held more securely, I don’t know, but… Tisamon and I know how the Wasps work.’

‘Maybe… I should go in tomorrow night,’ said Totho reluctantly. ‘I mean, I’m not so… with the creeping around, but I’ve got the tools to force a lock.’

Stenwold grimaced. ‘It may even come to that.’

And a new voice asked, ‘Where or what is Myna?’

Achaeos had returned. He looked dead on his feet, his grey skin gone deathly pale, eyes narrowed down to white slits.

‘Where in the name of reason have you been all night?’ Stenwold demanded of him.

Achaeos regarded him coldly. ‘Myna,’ he said. ‘Does this name mean anything to you?’

‘It does.’ Tisamon stood, his metal claw unfolding from the line of his arm.

‘She is going to Myna,’ the Moth said. ‘They are not in the town down there.’

‘How did you find this out?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘Old ways.’ Achaeos shrugged. ‘Ways you wouldn’t understand.’

Tisamon and Stenwold exchanged looks in which their mutual memory of Myna was unearthed, and neither of them looked happy with it.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Totho said. ‘He can’t know that.’

‘They are gone to Myna,’ Achaeos insisted stubbornly.

‘He could have… crept into Asta,’ Tynisa said slowly, ‘and overheard. But you didn’t, did you?’

‘There are ways,’ said Tisamon. ‘Masters of the Grey,’ he added.

‘Servants of the Green,’ Achaeos completed, as if by rote. ‘Yes, there are ways.’ If only you knew what I have risked, to take those ways. ‘So, Mantis, you at least believe me.’

There was a very swift movement that Achaeos could not follow, and a moment later the thin, cold edge of Tisamon’s blade was pressing against his neck. He held very still, nearly swallowing his heart inside, but outside he managed to cling to his customary aloofness.

‘I am no fool, nor am I quick to trust,’ Tisamon told him. ‘There are ways, yes, and one of them is to be in the pay of our enemies. Moths are subtle. It would not surprise me to find you playing such a game. Especially a game that led to Myna. What better place to lure Stenwold, in order to catch him?’

‘I speak only what I have seen, Servant of the Green. If you know my kinden so well, you should know not to bandy threats against me,’ Achaeos said defiantly, but the blade twitched against his skin, the faintest prick of blood welling.

‘Don’t think that you can frighten me,’ warned Tisamon, although to Stenwold’s ear, who had known him so long, there was a slight uncertainty to his voice.

‘I was not an assassin the last time you drew on me,’ said Achaeos, ‘and I am not a spy now. I could tell you one thing more that should convince you, but it is for your ears alone.’

Without moving his blade from its resting place, Tisamon leant close suspiciously. As he heard the Moth’s whispered sentence, the others saw him flinch from it. At once the blade was clear of the Moth’s neck, folding back along its owner’s arm.

‘He’s telling the truth,’ the Mantis announced.

‘Just from a bit of mystic posturing?’ Totho demanded. ‘Listen, Che could be in one of those buildings right now. They could be about to actually torture her. And now we’re supposed to… just go away to some whole other city, all because of some dream you had or something? Stenwold, you’re not going to listen to this rubbish, surely?’

To his alarm Stenwold was not looking dismissive, only troubled. ‘There is more in the world than we know,’ he said quietly. ‘I have been a long time trying to stave off that conclusion, but in the end I have had to admit there are things I have seen that I cannot account for. Tisamon, you truly believe this?’

A short nod was the Mantis’s only response.

‘Tynisa?’

She gave Tisamon a narrow look. ‘I’m with Totho on this. We should at least take another turn around Asta first.’

‘Well, in Collegium we abide by the vote, and it looks as though I get the deciding one,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m out of my depth here, with this talk of arcana, but logic tells me that Asta is a staging post, a muster ground. If you had important prisoners, maybe you would indeed move them to the nearest proper city. Which is Myna – of unhappy memory. Tisamon…’ Stenwold hesitated, biting his lip.

‘Speak,’ Tisamon said.

‘I… find it difficult to hold to what I cannot understand.’

‘You always did.’

‘But I never had so much riding on a decision before. What did he say to you, the Moth? What did he say to convince you?’ He glanced at Achaeos, who was impassive as always.

‘I cannot think that it would help you to know.’

‘Please tell me,’ asked Stenwold, and the Mantis shrugged.

‘He said that those who told him they had gone to Myna also said that they stayed their hands from us because of the badge that I bear.’ He touched it for a moment, the gold circle-and-sword pin of the Weapons-masters. ‘And I earned this, Stenwold. I earned it in blood and fire.’

For a long time Stenwold stared at him, before transferring his gaze to the others. Totho still looked rebellious but something in Tynisa’s face, some recent experience, had changed her mind. He gave a great sigh. ‘We’ll go to Myna.’ He had never thought that he would see Myna again, nor had he wished to.

It was a jumbled vision they had of it, landing at an airfield overflown by yellow and black flags. The cumbersome heliopter shuddered and groaned at the last, settling too fast and creaking with the effort, despite the repairs that Aagen had grounded it for last night.