‘Snow sent me, Lightning,’ a woman said in pidgin Awian. ‘He said the flamethrowers now are working.’

‘At last. Have you any infantry to fend off Insects? No? I’ll send for a squad. You-who are you?’ He was pointing at an approaching longbow man.

‘Warden of the first battalion Rachiswater archers.’

‘You are? Since when? What happened to Cirl?’

‘He’s dead, my lord. We can’t get into the barrack attics to shoot from the windows because people are hiding inside and they’ve locked the door.’

‘Can you not reason with them?’

‘They won’t reason.’

‘Break the door down, but make sure you guard them back to their houses. Ensure the houses are free of Insects and for god’s sake make them stay there. Then take up your position.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Lightning…’ I spoke up, but he was too harassed to hear.

A warden crowded into the doorframe. I guessed from his stainless accent that he was one of Eleonora’s cousins appointed to her lancers. He said, ‘I believe we should-’

Lightning interrupted, ‘I asked you to tell me where Hayl’s husband has gone.’

The captain said, ‘He is bereaved. He is as furious as he is demented with grief. He has taken a company of lancers to rescue people from the armoured carts and peel towers.’

‘Outside town?’

‘Yes.’

‘I told him not to!’

‘He said it was his revenge on the Insects. He said he will ride them down, unless the flight intensifies. The horses are even more terrified of Insects above them, especially the noise, and they can’t hear our orders. Becard only has one company from the third battalion Eske lancers.’

‘I thought you said the first battalion?’

‘Third, Lightning.’

‘Third. Third. Well, take the first, then. Put your armour on and venture out. Give him support but order him back as soon as you can. Tell him I said so, in the Emperor’s name.’

The hound’s hackles prickled; it started barking furiously. Lightning peered out around the doorjamb, unslung his bow, drew and loosed. An Insect charging down the street skidded to a halt in front of us, in death throes. Lightning lowered his bow and noticed me. ‘Jant, don’t just stand there!’

The fyrdsmen crowded around us. Lightning looked from face to frightened face. ‘You will all damn well wait while I speak with Comet…Jant, what’s happening? How can they fly? They never have, before. Never! Have you discovered anything?’

‘I think it’s a mating flight.’

‘A what flight? It’s chaos. Come and see Frost.’ We turned away from the crowd and his dog padded after us. Lightning continued, ‘We’ve lost seven hundred men and I would say twice that number are too afraid to leave the barracks. I need you to bring me more information. Tornado, please take over and by god tell the second Rachiswater archers to stop dropping stray arrows on the pyre crew.’

‘I’m going to report to the Emperor,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course.’

I heard a soldier mutter to his mate, ‘Fody said that Insects are carrying men off and drowning them in the lake. Picking them up and flying away with them!’

I rounded on him. ‘That’s false! Fyrdsman, don’t spread rumours! Insects are weak fliers, and they can’t lift anything. On the ground, they return to being normal Insects. Bear that in mind, all of you!’

As we crossed to Frost’s table Lightning continued quietly, ‘It’s not true, is it? They are not normal.’

‘No. Their behaviour has completely changed. The ones in the streets are trying to run back to the lake. They all return to the water, and I think they’re laying eggs in it.’

‘They’re what?’

‘They put their tails in and a sort of froth comes out. Then they range over the whole valley. They drag the people they’ve killed to the lake. They’re dissolving the Wall and pulling all kinds of dead shit out.’ I explained how they were making a splanchnic swamp of the lake and were agglutinating a wall to enclose it. It was as if they had claimed it as their own.

Lightning looked shocked. ‘Take care how you speak to Frost.’

‘Why?’

‘She hasn’t slept for three days. She is near breaking point. If she worsens I will send her to Whittorn, Eszai or not.’

‘No, Lightning. Zascai stress casualties are kept at the front, so we should do the same for Eszai. People recover much faster with their dignity intact.’

‘Well, she’s having a bad effect on the Zascai.’

‘We need her to work the dam.’

Frost had arranged four tables into a square, with no opening, and she was hidden by a high wall of folders, books and stacks of paper piled on top. We walked around two sides, seeing that when she had run out of books she had continued building with tool boxes. Only the far side was clear, facing away from the crowd, with her coffee pot and a pile of nuts and raisins on the surface. Frost was sitting, shoulders hunched, and her head on her hand. She swayed very slightly as she spoke to one of her engineers in emphatic, low tones. ‘So Insects are flying again? I need to know.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Go and man the telescope. Watch the dam. If they start papering over any part of it, come and tell me.’

‘Yes, Frost.’

‘I want all the barrels of limestone-cutting acid under lock and key. I want fifty draught horses ready to ride to the dam at a second’s notice. I want weather reports four times a day. If a drop of rain falls I want to know.’

‘Yes.’ The engineer glanced at me and rolled his eyes.

‘Bring me the spillway capacity calculations. If they block the spillway, it’s goodbye, Lowespass.’

Lightning cleared his throat. The foreman saw his chance to escape and dashed away.

Frost had dirt under her fingernails and white salt crusted at the edges of her eyes. Her hair, dry with neglect, was tied back but the ends straggled on her shoulders. She shoved her sleeves up her broad forearms with a gesture like a washerwoman, and said, ‘Tell me the figures.’

‘What figures?’

‘How many men have died? How many injured? How many people have I killed?’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Lightning said.

‘Come on, Saker, what else can it be?’ Her voice took on a hard edge. ‘There’s no record of Insects ever flying. Thou knowest that more than anyone, thou hast been around almost as long as they have. My lake is the only thing that’s new. The Insects are reacting to my action. To my dam-to water.’

‘Water?’ Lightning said. ‘There has always been a river.’

‘Standing water.’

‘It could be population pressures,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe they only swarm every two thousand years.’

‘They are flying to reproduce,’ Frost stated.

Lightning rubbed the scar on his palm. ‘Don’t be awkward…If Insects reproduce in the air we would have seen it before. Besides, Rayne dissects them and she says they have no male and female forms.’

‘They had no wings, either, before I built the dam.’

‘They had very small wings,’ Lightning said.

‘Oh, yes. We thought their wings were vestigial, but it turns out they were just immature.’

I said, ‘Having wings isn’t enough. They’ve also somehow gained the instinct to fly. It isn’t easy, it took me years to learn.’ I pulled my T-shirt neck down so they could see my collar bones which had been broken so many times they were gnarled.

Frost murmured, ‘Two, four, sixteen, two hundred and fifty-six…’ She grabbed papers and started screwing them up. ‘It’s my fault! I brought it on us! I renounce it!’

I said, ‘Why not have some breakfast?’

‘Eat? I’ve no time! The milk in my coffee is all the breakfast I need!’

I sat down on the edge of the table and she indicated her fortification of books and tool boxes. ‘This is my office. I am in charge of the dam.’

‘Of course,’ I said soothingly.

‘Even if everything else fails, my project won’t!’

‘Cool it.’

She put the handfuls of paper down slowly. ‘Oh, Jant. Why are we engineers always hoist with our own blocks?’