‘What’s going on?’ Salma hissed.

Totho shook his head. ‘I think this fellow here is about to explain.’

Then Salma saw there was another Ant in the room, a man of middle years who was regarding the three of them dubiously.

The Fly jabbed a finger towards him. ‘First,’ he said, ‘this is Commander Parops, into whose custody you’re now being put.’

‘I thought you said we were free,’ said Salma.

‘You are but, just so you know, this is the man who gets it in the neck if you turn out to be something other than what you claim you are.’ As the Fly was explaining, the Ant officer gave him a wry look.

‘So who’s you then, little feller?’ Skrill interrupted.

The Fly gave her a crooked smile. ‘My folks called me Nero on that most auspicious day whereon I was born – and that’s all the name I’ve ever needed.’

‘I know that name…’ Totho said, and paused, trying to bring it to mind. Then: ‘Are you an… do you draw pictures?’

‘No, I do not draw pictures, I am in fact a particularly talented artist,’ Nero said, somewhat sharply. ‘More than that, I’m an old drinking pal of Stenwold Maker, and when Parops told me that was a name being passed along the grapevine, I decided I had better spring you, if only to see what kind of kiddies ol’ Sten’s using these days.’

‘Well, Master Maker sent us here to witness what happened when the Wasps attacked Tark,’ Totho explained. ‘We need to get out of the city and find a decent vantage point.’

Nero and Parops exchanged glances. ‘Son,’ the Fly said, ‘you’ve got yourself the best vantage you’re ever likely to get. You’re inside the city, the siege’s already started and nobody’s getting in or out.’

‘Your man,’ the Dragonfly woman declared, ‘is late.’

The old Scorpion-kinden scratched his sunken chest with a thumb-claw. ‘First off, lady, he ain’t my man. He’s just this fellow what fitted your call. Second off, he ain’t late – not in this business anyway. We ain’t all got clocks and motors.’

She stalked up to him, her cloak swirling. The four of his heavies that he had stationed about the room went tense. He held up his hand, the one with the broken claw, to calm them.

‘Do you know what happens if you betray me, Hokiak?’ she asked.

Hokiak put on an easy smile that was a nightmare of jutting gums. ‘Don’t bandy threats, lady. I ain’t got this old by being scared of ’em.’ With measured unconcern he took up his walking stick and hobbled away from her, pointedly showing her his back if she wanted to take the opportunity. Inwardly, he waited for the blow and sighed raggedly when it did not come.

This one’s trouble, he decided. Hokiak had taken on a lifetime of trouble, from his half-forgotten youth as a Dry-claw raider to his current station as a black-marketeer in the occupied city of Myna. He had made a living out of trouble, more money than he could ever spend now. If this trouble-woman did kill him, it was not as though she would be cutting many years off his life.

But she was a mad one, no doubt about it. He could smile casually at her but he avoided her eyes. They burned, and there were fires there that would be raging when the world went cold.

Dragonfly-kinden. He didn’t know many of them. They had to go off the path of virtue early to become wicked enough to end up in his business. Otherwise they were all peace and light as far as he knew. So where’d this waste-blasted woman come from?

She was tall, almost as tall as he had been when he could still stand straight and without need for a cane. She kept herself cloaked but there was armour beneath it, and a blade that seemed always in one hidden hand. But she had money and, when she had talked to him, the money seemed to outweigh that drawn and hungry sword.

Now he wasn’t too sure. He was going to be in real trouble if his contact didn’t show, and equally so if the Empire had got wind of this deal and sent along more than he could handle. Either way he guessed that her first move would be to stick him for it, his fault or no.

Risk, risk, risk. He used to say he was getting too old for pranks like this, but then he had got too old for it, and still not given up the habit.

He hobbled back across his backroom’s width, cane bending under his weight at each step. Propping it against a table he took his clay pipe out and filled it, trusting that his age would excuse any shaking of his hands. He had dealt with murderers, fugitives, revolutionaries, professional traitors and imperial Rekef, but this woman, now, she gave him the shudders.

She called herself Felise Mienn and, apart from the name of her mark, that was all he knew.

At last a Fly-kinden boy dashed in, making everyone start.

‘He’s here, Master Hokiak,’ the boy blurted out.

‘How many’s he got, boy?’

‘Got three. Three and hisself.’

‘Then get out of here,’ Hokiak advised him. As the boy dashed off again he looked about him at his other lads. They were regulars of his and three were Soldier Beetle locals: blue-grey-skinned and tough, wearing breastplates that had the old pre-conquest red and black painted out. The fourth was an innocent-looking Fly-kinden who could puncture a man’s eyeball with a thrown blade at twenty paces. They all looked ready, relaxed. In contrast, Felise Mienn seemed to be shaking very slightly and very fast. Hokiak decided that discretion was a good trait in an old man, and poled himself behind the vacant bar counter.

The men who stepped in were also locals, less well armoured but with swords at their belts and one with a crossbow, its string drawn, hanging loose in his hand. They inspected the room suspiciously, and then stepped aside for their patron.

After all the tension he was an anticlimax: a plump Beetle-kinden with a harrowed expression who looked as soft as they made them. He wore a cloak but the clothes beneath it were of imperial cut and colour.

‘Draywain,’ Hokiak greeted him from behind the bar. In a moment’s inspiration he added, ‘Fancy a drink?’

‘Never mind the wretched drinks. Where’s the money?’ Draywain demanded. He was some manner of Imperial Consortium clerk, Hokiak gathered. He had been quite the big man under the previous governor but, since that man’s mysterious death, the former favourites, those who had survived him, had been having a hard time of it. Sometimes a fatal time.

‘She’s the money,’ Hokiak said, and Felise Mienn stepped forwards.

Draywain flinched from the sight of her. ‘A Common-wealer? You must be mad! Where could I spend her gold?’

‘She’s got good imperial gold. I seen it myself,’ Hokiak assured him, privately reckoning she had taken it off good imperials.

‘Do you have what I want?’ Felise asked impatiently.

Draywain narrowed his eyes. ‘Let me see the money.’

‘Do you have what I want?’ She asked it more slowly, emphasizing each word separately. ‘If you don’t know where Thalric has gone, nothing for you.’

‘Thalric of the Rekef? That bastard!’ Draywain barked. ‘Oh, I know where he went, don’t you worry. Now let me see the money.’

Without taking her eyes from him she unshipped a pouch, emptied it onto the table. A flurry of gold and silver spilled out, and Draywain and his men pulled closer to inspect it.

‘One hundred Imperials – our agreed price,’ she said. It was a decent sum of money, Hokiak decided, for just a piece of information. Not a fortune, certainly, but an awful lot.

Draywain looked up from the money, and he had obviously come to a slightly different conclusion. ‘It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘Not enough for imperial secrets that nobody else’ll sell you. My life’s hit the rocks recently, Dragonfly-lady. I need to relocate myself somewhere an honest man can do business, and that isn’t cheap.’

‘That is not the arrangement,’ Felise snapped.

‘Well then the deal’s changed places when you weren’t looking,’ Draywain replied. ‘Now you double what you’ve got there and I’ll start talking.’