‘They would do the job,’ the artificer observed. ‘I can see that. Now there are no air defences left.’

‘Little enough,’ Parops agreed. ‘Most of the nest crop is gone, and we only have a couple of orthopters that could even be repaired on time. They threw a lot at us last night.’

‘Of course, and for that very reason,’ Totho murmured, still scrutinizing the distant gasbags. ‘An artificer’s war.’ He looked back at the others, seeming more himself, more the avid student Salma had known. The animation with which he spoke of his trade was macabre. ‘Airships are very vulnerable to any flying attack. That’s why they’ve not been used much in warfare.’ Right now he might have been a College master delivering his lecture.

‘So what are those things out there?’ Skrill demanded. Totho gave her a frustrated look.

‘They’re airships, of course, because there will be no airborne opposition to them now. They just have to float them over the city. It makes perfect sense. It’s just that the Tarkesh don’t think like Wasps. Parops, your people fight ground wars, and so your air power is secondary, kept just for spotting and the occasional surprise attack, but the Wasps think like you should think, Salma. They think in the air and now they’ve opened the city on the ground, and stripped its wings away, they’ll proceed to attack it from above. Those heliopters are too heavy, and they fly too low. You could shoot them down with your wall artillery, maybe even with sufficient crossbows. The airships, though… they can go so high, only the best fliers could reach them. So what will you do?’

‘But what can they do?’ Nero asked. ‘They can spy us out, but we can shoot their troops if they drop down-’

‘They can do whatever they want,’ Totho said, leaning back against the wall, his mind still full of airships. ‘The whole of Tark will be spread below them. Explosives, incendiaries – it would be like dropping boiling oil onto a map, you see. Drop – drop – drop, and three buildings gone. And all we will be able to do is shake our fists at them.’

Che had never before seen an Ant-kinden who was actually fat. If it were not for Plius’s distinctive Ant features she would have thought him some kind of halfbreed. That was not the only surprise about him. He was not a Sarnesh Ant, which was even more remarkable given the Ants’ propensity to make war on others of their own kind. His skin was icy blue-white while the irises of his eyes were dead black, which had the effect of making them seem huge. She had seldom seen such colouring before, and had no idea what city-state he might have come from.

‘Scuto,’ he called out from the table he had to himself in the taverna, leaning back in a capacious chair. He wore an open robe over an expensive-looking tunic that strained over his belly, but there was a shortsword slung over the chair-back, to show he had not entirely left his belligerent roots behind.

Scuto glanced about, but none of the other patrons, few enough of them, seemed interested. It was still before midday and most of the inhabitants of Sarn’s foreign quarter were out taking care of business.

‘It’s been a while,’ Plius remarked, as the Thorn Bug approached. He kicked another chair out for him, and then glanced quickly from Che’s face to Sperra’s. ‘Pimping now, are you?’ he asked. Despite his louche appearance, he spoke in an Ant’s voice, with its characteristic clipped precision.

‘This lady here is Cheerwell Maker. You remember Sten Maker? Well this is his niece. The other’s called Sperra.’

Plius waved the introductions away. ‘So I heard you were looking for me, Scuto. It’s been a while,’ he repeated.

‘It has that,’ Scuto admitted. ‘Didn’t know how much of the old cadre would still be here for me.’

Plius shrugged. ‘There’s Dola over at the Chop Ketcher Importing place but, if you’ve not heard from her, she’s probably keeping her head down. As I said, Scuto, it’s been a while since then, and we’ve all had the chance to make some money here in Sarn.’

Scuto’s pause for breath, his moment of hesitation, opened a book for Che on his relations with Plius: revealing that they had never really trusted one another, and that Scuto had no guarantee that the other man would be of any use to them.

‘So where are we now?’ Scuto asked.

Plius shrugged. ‘We’re in a city where I have a good business going, Scuto, but if you want something, then ask and, if it’s not too much out of my way, maybe it will happen.’

‘What is your business, if I can ask?’ Che put in. This man seemed so corrupt, but she knew the Ants were ruthless with crime, even here in Sarn.

‘Ah, well.’ Plius coughed and grinned. ‘It happens I’m the most successful milliner in Sarn.’

‘The most successful what?’ Che asked.

‘I used to be the only one, but now there are two more, which shows you how profitable the trade’s become.’

‘A milliner? You mean hats?’

Plius’s grin widened. ‘The way it was, you see, there weren’t any here, because Ants would wear helms or go bare-headed, but of course Sarn has a foreign quarter that covers almost a third of the city these days, and Sarn is half again as big as most Ant states. So there was a call for them, and business was good. And you know what? Now the Ants have started buying as well. Now they can see the foreigners having a good time, they themselves start to change how they dress and the like. They still all look like they’re ready for a funeral, but at least they’re not all dressed exactly the same.’ He turned his attention back to Scuto. ‘So what is it, then? What brings you back here for me?’

‘You know what,’ Scuto told him. ‘It’s happening, Plius. It’s time.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve heard the news.’ Plius spread his hands. ‘The Empire, which was your man Sten’s bedbug back in the old days, is away battering Tark even as we speak. Things may have changed in this city, but not that much. Nobody in Sarn’s going to lose sleep about the Tarkesh taking a few punches.’

‘We ain’t here to ask for Tark’s sake,’ Scuto said flatly. ‘It’s too late, anyway, by my reckoning. This lot’d never get there in time. Now I ain’t a diplomat or a pretty speaker, so I’ll put it plain as I can. Sure, you’ve heard about Tark. Well, soon enough you’ll hear about Helleron, too.’

‘What about Helleron?’

‘Soon enough,’ Scuto said again. ‘And probably Egel and Merro, once they’re done with Tark. Who knows where next? They’ll be marching up the coast towards Collegium, and from Helleron it’s not such a jump to take Etheryon. Or even Sarn.’

Che expected Plius to laugh this off, but something in Scuto’s tone, maybe his very lack of emphasis, had drawn the Ant’s face longer and longer. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’ Plius said. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Ain’t never been more,’ Scuto confirmed, sounding tired. ‘Look, Plius, I saw the start of it at Helleron, when they tried to get a thousand men by rail into Collegium to shake the place up. They’re not really after Tark. It’s the Lowlands they want. The whole of it, from Helleron all the way to Vek and the west coast. They’ve got more fighting men than five Ant cities put together, and a dozen slave-towns to pull more soldiers from. You know the Commonweal?’

‘Yes, I know the Commonweal,’ Plius said testily.

‘Well then you know they’ve spent the last dozen years carving out a great lump of that, and now they’re ready for us,’ said Scuto. Plius’s easygoing manner had evaporated entirely now, and he was looking a little stunned.

‘So what do you want?’ he asked, and Scuto replied, ‘We need to speak to the top, Plius. To the Royal Court.’

Plius let out a long breath. ‘If you’d asked that straight off I would have said you were mad. Now, though… I have some contacts. Not high-up contacts, but they’re there. I can try for an audience, but it’ll use up just about all my credit with them.’