She was almost at the door when she saw him. He was still a hundred yards down the street, but she recognized him instantly. Thalric, in his long coat, with the sword scabbarded beneath it. He began to walk towards her in a patient, purposeful way.

She skittered backwards and took the next side-alley, aware that he was between her and the better parts of town. She was heading into that district where they had ambushed Stenwold, and it had been chosen because the locals cared little about any commotion. Certainly the death of a single Spider girl would excite no curiosity.

She picked up her pace. Glancing behind her she could no longer see him but she had a sense of motion, of being tracked. He was in the air again, she guessed, and could follow her easily, tracing her hurried dashing from street to street as he glided silently over the rooftops.

She stopped under the eaves of a run-down house. Her eyes were good in the dusk, but they seemed to have failed her now. They conspired with her ears and her mind, putting a hundred pursuers on her trail. Certainly she thought she heard the soft blur of wings above, so that he could even be on the very roof of this place, waiting for her next move. And yet surely was that not him, the shadow in the alley across the way? The whole city now seemed to be hunting her.

There was a distinct scrape from up above, and such imaginings fell away. Someone was above her, and who else could it be?

He might not know I’m here. He might not know I’m here. She hugged herself, trying to keep the panic in, but thinking only of Thalric’s careful, patient style. He would wait all night.

He might not know I’m here.

But then her nerve snapped and she bolted and, as she broke cover she heard the flash of his energy sting, felt the heat but not the hammering shock of it, as it scorched the muddy flags of the street over to her left. She was running blindly then, and knowing he could fly faster than she could run, but run she did, as fast as she could whip her legs to motion, until she could go no faster. Then she struck against something – something put hard in her path without warning – and she was thrown on the ground. Her head spun from the impact but she forced herself to look up and see.

And she saw his face, and it was the face of Tisamon, cold and utterly without mercy. His claw was over his hand, raised idly to finish her.

Arianna screamed, she could not stop herself, and she covered her eyes.

Tisamon was surprised at himself, because he had wished to see this, the traitress cowering at his feet, utterly defenceless, but now he had it, something drained away inside him.

There had been no fight. He had been expecting a fight.

As that thought came to him he looked up, and Thalric landed not ten yards away, sword drawn, and their eyes met. The shock of recognition was a physical thing, two-edged and cutting. Tisamon remembered the fire and pain, the injury he had still not entirely shaken free of. Thalric, for his part, remembered the wounds he had taken, the wounds he had given, and how Tisamon had simply refused to die.

For a long moment, with Arianna whimpering at the Mantis’s feet, they stared at one another. Tisamon’s offhand, as though it had a life of its own, had plucked a dagger from his belt. He had sought them out particularly, those daggers, after the fight at Helleron, and paid a heavy purse for them.

‘She is mine,’ Tisamon said. ‘I claim her.’ As he was speaking a Beetle-kinden pair, a man and a woman, stepped out into the alley, glanced from him to Thalric, and retreated hurriedly back indoors.

Thalric’s mind was at war with itself. This was the one confrontation he would normally have baulked at. He had come far too close to dying because of this man, and who knew whether his daughter was lurking nearby? He had a sense, as he was hunting Arianna down, that his were not the only feet on her trail. He had that sense again now, even with Tisamon before him. Who else is there and where are they?

He feared. A bitter realization that, but he feared.

Still, he was a soldier of the Empire. He took a step forward and spat a bolt from his palm at the Mantis.

Tisamon hurled himself aside, though the fire scorched his shoulder. But just as Thalric had loosed the bolt the Mantis’s hand had flicked forwards and he now saw the Wasp stagger as the dagger struck. A glancing blow, for Thalric had seen the silver flicker coming, but it had been flying straight for his face and, as he dodged, it cut a line across his temple, above his ragged cheek where Arianna had clawed him. He made to launch another bolt, but Tisamon had a second knife in his hand even now, sending the edged darts spinning out one after another, driving Thalric back, back, then up to a rooftop, almost to the limit of his sting’s range. Tisamon had a hand full of knives, little hiltless throwing pieces, and there was no way to tell how many he still concealed.

This confrontation could see both of us dead very easily. The thought was in Thalric’s mind, but he could see no acknowledgement of it in Tisamon’s expression. Thalric was more mobile, the Mantis’s eyes better in the darkness.

Stalemate. And Thalric knew that he could not squander his life here, when he was badly needed to further the Rekef plans in Vek. Then let this Mantis see if he could stand against the fall of a whole city.

Thalric’s wings blurred into life and he hurled himself into the sky, watching for that next knife at all times until he had put a building between them. Even then he could not have said whether his reason for flight was anything other than a way of disguising his fear.

Arianna felt a brief moment of relief as Thalric departed, but it withered as she looked up into the Mantis’s face.

‘Please don’t kill me,’ she begged. Tisamon regarded her impassively. Now the moment was upon him he had expected his earlier passion to be urging him to do it. To his distant surprise it was the other way round. A fickle current of feeling was trying to stay his hand even though his reason insisted he had to kill her.

He dragged her two streets further towards the river, to an empty, litter-strewn square where a body could have lain for a tenday without discovery, casting her down against a windowless wall. He knelt by her, and the flat of his blade was abruptly cold against her neck, a trick he had used often enough to put fear into others, not that this shivering Spider needed it. ‘Where are your friends?’ he growled at her.

‘They…’ She swallowed, closed her eyes at the feel of the metal moving against her skin. ‘They’re dead, all of them.’

‘You lie.’ He twitched, just slightly, but she felt the tiny cut, a bead of blood blooming.

‘No, please! Thalric killed them. I’m all that’s left.’

He considered this. It should have seemed impossible, but she had been fleeing and Thalric had been chasing her. This was becoming ever more complex.

‘Please – please let me talk to Stenwold…’ she started, and he hauled her up by her collar in sheer rage, slamming her back against the wall. His lethal claw was drawn back, and in that instant all his strength of will went into restraining it.

‘Do not even utter his name, traitress,’ he hissed. ‘You and I, we understand one another. We know the old ways and the old laws, but Stenwold doesn’t. He believes in things like conscience and forgiveness, but you and I know better. Some acts of betrayal have prices that must be paid.’

He wanted her to scream at him, to fight him. That would have made his decision easy for him, and he liked simplicity. Instead she just hung in his grip, shaking. She was, he decided, a wretched specimen. Atryssa would have held her in contempt.

‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I need to tell someone…’ And then her voice dried up, and he saw a reflection move in her eyes, which widened abruptly.