‘Watch out!’ she yelled, and he whirled around with claw raised high, and when the sword came down he caught it.

It was not Thalric, but a cloaked woman, some complete stranger. She gave him no chance to see more than that, because that sword was coming at him again. Two strong overhead swings, and then a lunge that nearly gutted him as he leapt back and back, turning each blow aside. The sword flashed in her hands, turning through each attack and never still, now gripped two-handed, now passed to her left or right hand, springing at him from all angles.

He had turned a dozen such blows before he gained the initiative, ducking under one swing and lashing at her midriff. She swayed aside, and the tip of his claw scraped against armour, then the pommel of the sword hammered down on him, and he caught it with the palm of his free hand, forced it aside and lashed out at her face with the spines of his arms.

She fell back, not even scratched, allowing him a better look at her. She was some kinden he did not know well but he thought he knew her race, if not her face. The cloak was mostly blown aside, and he could see she was wearing a full suit of armour – but what armour! He had never seen anything like it. Delicate chainmail overlaid with plates of metal that glittered darkly with greens and blues and prismatic metal tones. He nearly lost himself in staring at it, and backed up a dozen steps as she attacked again. Her style was new to him but she was swift even encased in that metal, dancing both with her sword and with him. He met her blade another half-dozen times, taking each blow on his claw or its armoured gauntlet.

The Spider traitress must have run by now, he realized. He would have to hunt her down again. He did not care. This was special.

He turned his next parry into an attack, and he was backing her up once more, his claw tracing lines of swift silver in the air, now sparking off the straight blade of her sword, and sometimes drawing the faintest scratch off that glorious armour when she did not move quite soon enough.

He sought out her face, golden-skinned, composed into perfect concentration, beautiful and fixed as a statue’s.

He was under her guard for just a moment, lashing beneath her breastplate. He severed a handful of mail links, cut a tear into the arming jacket underneath. Then she struck him with the guard of her blade, almost catching him with the edge. The blow took him in the shoulder Thalric had already burned and he hissed in pain and fell back. He saw her move after him without a thought.

He found he was grinning, because she was magnificent and he had not fought her like in many years.

Another series of lightning exchanges. Her blade was double-edged and needle-pointed, moving like sunlight and mirrors in her hands, each attack different from the last, without pattern or predictability. He shifted and spun with them, letting his reflexes take him where thinking could not keep up, divorcing his mind from the long-trained motions of his body, letting her advances exhaust themselves till he was driving her back in turn. Three times he struck and failed to penetrate her armour, and once he managed a shallow line of blood across her leg beneath the severed links of the mail.

Her eyes locked his and he knew she would kill him if she could. He would have no choice but to kill her in exchange. It was as it should be and either he would die or he would remember this contest for ever.

Tisamon found he was now breathing heavily, feeling the skin tight across his chest and side, the healing burn where Thalric had caught him at the fight over the Pride. His seared shoulder throbbed in agony yet it seemed distant and he could ignore it.

They had reached the endgame. He still had no idea who she was but he would swear now that she was no Wasp agent, for if the Wasps could call on such as this they would rule the world already.

He fell back ten paces, dropped into a new stance, claw held low but angled upwards. She fell into a stance of her own, with that sword gripped double-handed and high, the point aimed downwards. A perfect complement.

He waited for her to come at him.

Whole ages seemed to pass, with the two of them frozen in place, each waiting for the slightest move from the other to set them off. He became aware that the Spider girl had not moved after all, was still cowering back against the wall where he had left her. There was another voyeur, too, a man watching from a doorway. It was all immaterial.

And then she stepped back out of her stance, as though they had simply been playing at a practice bout and she now had other things to do. Tisamon fought the immediate instinct to do the same, holding his pose, but she just stood there now, looking about her, and he could have killed her at his leisure.

She spoke, her face full of confusion. ‘Where is this place? This is not Shon Aren.’ She saw him there, as though noticing for the first time. The sword in her hand seemed almost forgotten. ‘Mantis-kinden? Am I in Y’yen, then? But why?’ She approached him, quite without fear or hostile intent, and from the corner of his eye Tisamon saw the man who had watched them darting forwards,

Instantly his claw was in motion, bringing the stranger up short with the edge close to his throat. The strange woman merely watched without alarm or recognition.

A Spider-kinden, Tisamon saw – there had been far too many in his life recently. This specimen was a long-haired man of middle years, his hands empty, teeth bared above the blade that menaced him.

‘And who are you?’ Tisamon demanded. ‘Tell me quickly or I’ll have done with you. There are too few answers tonight.’

‘Oh, I know of your kind’s enmity towards mine,’ the man replied, as calmly as he could muster. ‘My name is Destrachis and I’m with this lady here, whose name is Felise Mienn.’

‘Destrachis!’ the woman exclaimed even as he said the name, although not with much love, and with no sign that she saw the claw at his throat. ‘What…?’

‘We are in Collegium, Felise,’ Destrachis explained carefully.

‘Yes, you are,’ Tisamon confirmed. ‘And someone had better explain to me exactly what we were fighting about.’

‘You…’ She seemed to see him again and her eyes narrowed. Instantly his blade was away from Destrachis and he was falling back into his stance again.

‘I saw you with him,’ she said. ‘You must be one of his creatures. Tell me where he has gone.’

‘Where who has gone?’ Tisamon asked her

She spat back, ‘Thalric! Thalric the Wasp! Thalric of the Empire. Your master, is he not?’

‘He is not,’ Tisamon said firmly. ‘He is my enemy, as he clearly must be yours. You seek his blood?’

She nodded, seeming more lucid now.

‘Then if I knew where he was bound I would tell you,’ he confirmed. ‘And this here is your creature, is he?’

She looked at Destrachis coolly, but it was a moment before she responded. ‘He… I was travelling with this man. He… Destrachis brought me here.’

Tisamon began to relax again, until he heard Arianna’s voice calling them. All three of them turned to her: a young Spider-kinden girl in a torn and muddied robe.

‘You really want to kill Thalric?’ she asked hopefully, and Felise nodded in a single sharp movement.

‘He will leave Collegium tonight,’ Arianna explained. ‘He is travelling to Vek.’

The name of that city meant nothing to Felise, it was clear, but Destrachis murmured, ‘West of here, along the coast.’

‘Then we, too, must go to Vek,’ Felise said. ‘We must go now. We could catch him on the road.’

‘Vek it is,’ Destrachis confirmed, somewhat wearily, casting a cautious glance at Tisamon. ‘All right if we make our exit? Despite what just happened, we’re really not your enemies, honestly.’

‘I see that,’ Tisamon folded his claw back along the line of his arm.