She got back to Stenwold’s townhouse in good time. The smell of new bread was in the air, his servant making breakfast. Despite all that was on her mind, she felt hungry at once, passing straight through the hall and into the kitchen.

She stopped abruptly, for Tisamon was seated at the table, and before him lay her scabbarded dagger.

As his eyes met hers, a chill went through her. In Everis nobody had worried much about the Mantis-kinden. They were few, and across the water, and they were savages. Oh, dangerous enough out there in the wilds, but stout walls and civilized company, good wine and good conversation, could keep the threat of them at bay.

And here she was, and here he was, and although they were within Collegium’s walls it was as if he had brought the wilds inside with him.

Her eyes flicked down to her weapon, back up to his face. She, who was so skilled a reader of minds and faces, could see nothing past the shield of his dislike.

‘Good morning, Master Tisamon,’ she tried, her voice shaking a little.

He blinked, said nothing.

What did he know? And did it matter, for surely he would as easily kill her without a reason, or for such a reason as bedding his friend, as for the real one: the real reason that she was in the pay of the Empire, rather than the general cause that she was an ancient enemy of his blood.

The servant put down a plate of warm bread and a pot of the nut and honey mixture that Beetles seemed to favour. The man looked from her to the Mantis, and made a quick exit.

‘I hope Tynisa is well,’ she began conversationally, spreading some honey over a chunk of bread, while determinedly trying to keep her hands from trembling. Only when she had finished that did she reach out and reclaim the dagger, pushing it into the belt of her robe. ‘I had wondered where I left it,’ she said. ‘D-did you find it somewhere?’ Desperate attempts at normality in the face of that blank disdain.

At last he spoke. ‘You should be more careful.’ Was he warning her away from Stenwold? Was he acknowledging that her association had not harmed his friend? It was impossible to tell.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and looked away from him as she began to eat, aware all the time that his eyes were fixed on her.

Up above she heard the sound of Stenwold himself stirring. He would be down soon enough, adding one more layer of awkwardness to their little gathering. Then she would tell him how there were more students waiting to hear him speak, that they would be gathering tonight, and that he was eagerly expected.

She would announce it to him flawlessly. She would play her role without any catch in her voice or a single moment of doubt, even under the loathing stare of the Mantis. Whatever she might feel on the inside was quite irrelevant.

When Stenwold appeared, her story came out evenly, convincingly, over breakfast. He nodded at her animatedly, smiling widely at the prospect. He thinks he’s getting somewhere, she thought. But it was at her that he smiled most. It cut her more deeply than she would have thought, how much encouragement he took from the mere fact of her. Oh Stenwold, for all your learning, you are a fool.

‘Tonight then,’ he said. ‘And perhaps the Assembly will finally get the message. The longer they leave it, the more a meeting with them will become irrelevant. I’ll have the whole city up in arms soon enough, if they hold off.’ He grinned at Tisamon, who gave him a brief nod that contained all anyone could ever want of ready violence.

And you are right, Stenwold, Arianna thought, which is why we must do this to you. I’m sorry.

It was almost time to leave, with dusk stealing about the Collegium streets. Stenwold had his academic robes swathed about him, but wore his sword as well. The students liked to see him bearing it. It showed he was serious – not just some typical all-talk-no-action Assembler. He paused to examine himself in his mirror, a full-length Spider glass that had cost a fortune, and had once adorned Tynisa’s room.

Every inch the hero? he thought, Or are there simply too many inches to me? There was a barely contained excitement in him, for he had been wrestling with the city’s inertia for a tenday and now he was winning. The word had come, during the day, that the Assembly would deign to see him after all. That meant his loyal students would truly have something to celebrate.

He then reminded himself of the grim realities. This was no game he was playing, and all those who listened to his words might be signing their own death warrants once the Wasps came. Still, Stenwold felt light-hearted, too much so to brood on things. A new lease of life, is what I have.

He came downstairs to find Tisamon waiting at his hall table, less than a metre from the spot where his daughter Tynisa had killed her first man – an assassin sent by the Wasp officer called Thalric.

‘Where’s Tynisa?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘She said she would meet us there,’ the Mantis confirmed. He was eyeing Stenwold slightly oddly, so the Beetle paused a moment to make sure his robe was hanging straight, the sword not caught in it. A growing feeling that he ought to explain something overtook him and eventually, after some moments of awkward silence, he did.

‘Ah… Tisamon… last night… it’s only that…’ He was caught by that Mantis stare, not knowing what the man had seen, what he knew of the lines he had crossed with Arianna.

‘I was wondering whether you would mention it,’ said Tisamon. ‘I know, Sten.’

‘You do? Ah, well…’ Stenwold could not decide whether to smile or not. ‘And do you… what do you think…?’

‘Whatever I think, it is not as it was with Atryssa and myself,’ the Mantis said, conjuring up his long-ago liaison with Tynisa’s Spider-kinden mother.

Meaning that this is not true love, just some old man’s foolishness. Stenwold’s heart sank at the implied judgement. But of course, he’s right. He opened his mouth for the admission, but a hand rose to stop him.

‘Whatever wrong you have done is nothing,’ said Tisamon flatly. ‘In clasping to Atryssa, in siring a halfbreed between our two peoples, I broke with my kinden and betrayed them.’

‘Tisamon, you did nothing wrong-’

‘It is between myself and my conscience.’ A wan smile. ‘It is a Mantis thing, Sten. You wouldn’t understand. But we were talking about you.’

‘You think I’ve been a fool?’

‘Of course I do, but we’re at war.’

Stenwold frowned, sitting down heavily opposite him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You could easily die tonight,’ Tisamon told him. ‘Or in a tenday. In a month, we all could be dead – you, Tynisa, your niece and her lover… myself. My end could come, though I am better equipped to avoid it. War, Sten, and war such as the Lowlands has not seen since the Days of Lore.’

‘I still don’t see…’

‘So live,’ Tisamon shrugged, ‘while you can, while your heart still beats. This is no handfast, no building of the future together. So bed the girl and who should care?’

‘I… didn’t expect you to see things like that,’ Stenwold admitted.

Tisamon nodded. ‘My people, they would not understand. We also live as though we might all die the next day, but in our case it is so they may say, in our memory: he was skilled and honourable. Nobody says that this skilled and honourable dead man might have had a hundred other things he wished to do. I have been too long away from my own, Sten, and seen altogether too much of the world. Why do you think we keep to ourselves so much, we Mantids, save that there is so much outside that would tempt us? I envy you, Stenwold.’

It was an uncharacteristic speech, coming from regions in himself that Tisamon usually kept shut and barred. ‘You’ve been thinking about her,’ Stenwold guessed.

‘I have, yes. Last night, after I knew what you had done… I think I cannot be blamed for seeing Atryssa in my mind. And Tynisa is… so much her image. A mercy, I think, as I would not wish her to carry these features of mine. I envied you, last night, for having someone… anyone.’