It would be the work of a moment to take up her dagger and put it through his ear. Forty years of life and learning brought to a certain point and then cut off.

Would he boast, she wondered, if he survived to see the morning? Would he tell his College peers of his prowess? Or that evil-eyed Mantis friend of his? She thought not, because even in so few days she had come to know Stenwold Maker.

With her bare feet she searched her discarded robe for the blade, feeling along the braided cord of her belt. The work of a moment to kill him, the work of another to slip from the window and vanish into the night. Thalric would be surprised but pleased.

But the dagger was not there. She narrowed her eyes so as to pick out her pale robe in the darkness. She knelt by it, feeling. She had shrugged the garment off for him, not in haste, measuring his reaction as she unfurled her bare skin piece by piece. She did not recall the weapon dropping away, so it must still be here.

She stopped, clutching the robe to her. She was suddenly afraid, but it was a moment before she could pin down the cause.

The door was ajar, just a sliver. The doors in this house were all kept ajar, she recalled. Of course they were. They were Beetle doors with complicated catches. She could never have opened them if they were fully shut. The locking mechanism, simple though it might be, would have baffled her.

As it would also baffle the Mantis, since they were similarly of the old Inapt strain who had been left behind by the revolution. Spider-kinden might bar their doors, or fasten them with hooks, but never some twisting turning thing like this device. And so the doors were all ajar, because of Stenwold’s household, and of her.

Knowing that, feeling across the floor for a blade that was not there, she abruptly knew. Standing, with the cool of the night on her skin, she looked across the room, seeing just a little in the faintest of moonlight from between the shutters. She and Stenwold were alone.

But he had been here and he had taken her knife. As tactfully and gracefully as that, because he was a Mantis and he did not trust her. She did not fear that he had broken her cover. It was all merely part of the loathing his kinden had for hers.

She saw now, in her mind, that gaunt shadow appearing in this room as she slept peacefully; his closed face, looking from Stenwold to her. He might have had his metal claw on his wrist. He could have killed her. She would not have known and she had not even woken. Instead, he had withdrawn. Stenwold’s misplaced respect had kept him from ending her, but he did not trust her. He had removed her blade.

Arianna felt a strange feeling of relief. This was not over Tisamon’s forbearance, she realized, but because she would not now stand over Stenwold’s sleeping form with that blade in her hand, having to make that choice. The emotion took her by surprise. Surely she would not hesitate, but… how the man spoke! He had been to so many places, seen so many things. Now he had come to what he considered was home but he was wrong. She could hear the words he left unsaid almost more clearly than those he actually spoke. He was an outsider in his own city. He had made himself someone apart. He was struggling to save something that had already shunned and snubbed him. Yet Collegium had such a broad palette of colours to it that he had never quite noticed how he was not a native any longer.

Not so different, after all, she thought. She had told the truth when she had said that the Spiderlands offered no home for her any more. She had fallen in the dance, as her whole family had, and with nobody to help them back up.

She examined her hands and then clenched them into fists, watching the needles of bone slide from her knuckles. The knife was better, but Mantids were not the only kinden that the Ancestor Art could arm.

Stenwold would die just as easily.

She stood over him and watched the rise and fall of his stomach, the total relaxation of expression. It struck her that she had never seen him before without a look of vague worry. Except last night, when he had drunk so much and she had taken her robe off her shoulder and let it fall in careful stages to the floor.

If she had the dagger, things might be different. With her hands, with her Art-drawn claws… She felt abruptly crippled by something, some hindering and atavistic feeling. If she had the dagger, or the orders, but just now she had neither.

Perhaps Thalric would prefer him captured and talking. The rationalization – and she knew it for one – calmed her. Thalric had a plan and she was sure this moment of reticence on her part would make no difference, in the end.

She carefully tucked herself under the sheet again, her back to him, feeling him shift slightly. After the cool of the air she let her back and feet rest against him, stealing his warmth. When he moved again she turned automatically, her hand moving across his chest. There were scars there. She had seen them. It was a strange life, that had made this man scholar and warrior both.

When he put his arm around her she felt, for one instant, trapped, and in the next, safe, before she recalled herself to her role. Whether it was her role or herself that reached out for him she could not have said.

General Alder woke as soon as the tent-flap was pushed aside. By long practice his one hand found the hilt of his sword.

‘General,’ came the hushed voice of one of his junior officers. ‘General?’

It was ridiculous. ‘Either you want me awake, soldier, in which case speak louder, or you don’t, in which case what in the Emperor’s name are you doing here?’

‘I’m sorry, General, it’s the Colonel-Auxillian.’

Drephos. There was only one Colonel-Auxillian in the army. ‘What does that motherless bastard want?’ Alder growled. It was pitch-dark within the tent, too dark for him to even see the man a few paces away. ‘What’s the hour?’

‘Two hours before midnight, General.’

‘And he wants to speak to me now? Can’t he sleep?’

‘I don’t know, General-’

‘Get out!’ Alder told the man. He sat up on his bed, a folding, metal-sprung thing they had made especially for him in the foundries of Corta. Drephos was a menace, he decided. The twisted little monster was taking his privileges too far.

Still, the man had a reputation, and it was a reputation for being right. Alder spat, and then dragged a tunic one-handed over his head and slung a cloak over his shoulders. Barefoot, he stepped out of his tent.

The camp had enough lights for him to see the cowled and robed form of Drephos standing some yards away. The agonized junior officer was hesitating nearby and, when Alder raised a hand to dismiss the man, Drephos’s voice floated towards him.

‘Don’t send him away just yet, General. I think you will have orders to issue before long.’

Alder stalked over to him. ‘What is it now?’ he demanded. ‘Your precious plan failed a day and a night ago.’

‘Did I admit its failure?’ Drephos enquired.

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘I did not, General, nor do I. Have your men gather for an attack. The moment is at hand.’

Alder stared at him, at the featureless shadow within the cowl. ‘Then-’

‘Tark’s walls are thicker to be sure, and of a stronger construction than I had thought, but the reagent has permeated the stone.’

‘And you know this?’

‘By the simplest expedient, General. I went and looked.’

Alder shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Darkness is a cloak to me, General, but a blindfold to my enemies. I simply walked up to the enemy’s walls and knew what I was looking for. In three hours, perhaps less, you will have your breach. I would therefore have your response standing by.’