Taki smiled, without much humour. ‘I can vouch for that sort of talk. They had some Wasp bigwigs visiting in the Destiavel house, and I heard some of the servants talking about it. You could write their speeches for them, Bella Cheerwell.’

‘And… well, this is where I need local knowledge. Your politics here seem very complicated.’

The Creev spat, which Che took to mean that his home politics back in Chasme were simpler, but Scobraan laughed briefly,

‘Sure enough. They’re trying on each of the parties in turn, to see which is the best fit. And when they’ve got their feet in, and wiggled their toes a bit, they’ll want to make sure their party controls the Corta Obscuri. And stays there.’

‘And the Empire will thus control Solarno,’ Che agreed. ‘And then one day you’ll wake up and they’ll introduce you to the new governor and garrison the Empire has been so kind as to gift you with, and Solarno will join the Empire without even a fight. And then the rest of them, every city around the Exalsee, with Solarno as a base to fly from. All of you, with no exceptions.’

After she had finished talking they glanced at one another unhappily. She could see them wrestling with the scale of the problem. Their world was solely the shores of the Exalsee, just a dozen communities and the wide sky above the waters. The world beyond the northern ranges had always been a joke, to them: foreign people doing silly things.

‘An Empire,’ said Niamedh with distaste. ‘All that – so many cities – all under one man’s command?’

‘It is you Solarnese who are strange,’ said Drevane Sae. ‘Your factions and families, pah! A body has one head, and a people one ruler. These Wasps, though… We thought of them as perhaps a few cities or nests or whatever-they-have. Somewhere beyond the Dryclaw, we thought. But not this.’

‘If they came against Solarno…’ Scobraan downed his drink and waved Chudi over to provide more.

‘They will come,’ said Taki. ‘They are laying their ground even now. Be honest with yourself: you know it. More and more of them will come. Right now, they’re fighting the Spiderlands somewhere to the north.’

‘Capture Solarno and you can have a fleet at Porta Mavralis before they even know what’s going on,’ te Frenna agreed.

The halfbreed known as The Creev cleared his throat. ‘How are they getting in?’ It was the first thing he had yet said. Che now saw that what she had taken for an armlet was in fact the iron band of a slave, ostentatiously loose enough to be pulled off his wrist and over his hand at any time.

‘In?’ Scobraan asked, bewildered.

‘How many in Solarno?’ the Creev asked, and then answered the question himself with, ‘Two hundred soldiers? Four hundred, perhaps? But who has seen five hundred soldiers cross the peaks? Even one by one, there would be talk. I fly often to the Toek Station, trade with the Scorpion-kinden there. No word do I hear of Wasps coming through in great numbers – and the Scorpions are good door-keepers. So how do they get in? And how many more?’

He left them all in an uncomfortable silence.

‘The Wasps in Solarno have already tried to kill Che once,’ Taki said, for she had not doubted the hand behind the attack at the Venodor for one moment. ‘Now we know what the Empire means, how great a threat they really are, the knowledge that they killed Amre for. We have to let people know. We all have ears who will readily listen to us – in Solarno, in Princep and Chasme. We can let people know the Wasps are coming.’

‘And what?’ Scobraan asked her. ‘A thousand thousand Wasps? Whole armies of them! You heard her. What are we supposed to do?’

‘I heard her,’ Taki said forcefully. ‘Better than you did, I think. Where are these Wasps fighting? Here? Yes, soon enough. And already in the Spiderlands. And also in these Lowlands where Che comes from. And she said north even of there as well – in the Crommonwheel…’

‘Commonweal,’ Drevane Sae corrected her, in a tone that suggested his people had not forgotten.

‘So how much can they now spare for us? And if we make it expensive for them, if we make them pay dearly, they will lose their taste for it and weaken. What Bella Cheerwell is proposing is an alliance.’

They stared at Taki, even Che.

‘Well,’ Che said. ‘I suppose it would be. In a way.’

‘So if Solarno stands firm, if all the Exalsee stands, then the Lowlands and all the others will surely stand,’ Taki said. ‘Are we totally without influence? No, we are the pilots of the Exalsee. We are the best of the best. My Domina will listen to me. So make yours listen to you.’ She stood up. ‘Or do you think the Wasps will still give us free rein to fly and to fight, after their armies are camped about Solarno?’

One by one they stood up in agreement, Niamedh first – and Scobraan, wearily, last.

Che and Taki were the last to leave the piers, because Che knew she would need as much clear water as possible to get the Stormcry into the air. It was worth it, though, to see the others taking off. Scobraan’s twin-engined fixed-wing, as barrel-bodied and bulky as he himself was, and armour-plated to boot, growled its way into the waters of the Exalsee, rising from them magnificently, impossibly, like a rock miraculously taking flight. Niamedh’s Executrix was a sleek orthopter, its prow crooked forwards and then hooked back under like the arms of a mantis, the wings seeming too narrow to take her into the sky until the machine leapt forward with a single clap, wingtips tearing the waves, and then away. As te Frenna’s heliopter spiralled upwards from the water, Drevane Sae sounded a mournful, far-carrying note on the horn strung about his neck, and his glittering mount, all of thirty feet from antennae to tail-tip, roared out of the jungle to perch beside him. It had a jewelled saddle with a holstered longbow to one side and a sheath of lances to the other. Finally, the Creev climbed into his own orthopter, Mordant Fire, a blunt-faced, ugly-looking machine whose bows were lumpy with half-hidden weaponry. He paused for a second, looking back at the two women, and then his funnels began smoking and his engine choked into life, and he was sweeping his way across the water, before battling into the air.

Taki had already hopped into the Esca Volenti, and Che managed to get herself seated within the Stormcry, despite the rocking waves. She started the engines and let their pull take her away from the pier, building and building momentum until she could put the flaps down and let the thrumming power of them rip her from the water and cast her into the air.

The Esca soared overhead, leading the way, and Che corrected her course, keeping well clear of the water, and letting herself ride in the wake of Taki’s machine.

Even after a cup of the bitter root tea that Nivit’s girl had brewed up, Tynisa had seemed shaken, oddly cold and light-headed from her lost moment in the rain. Gaved had been concerned enough about her safety to escort Tynisa to where Achaeos was awaiting news, which had clearly surprised her.

‘Why?’ Tynisa had asked him.

‘What?’ he had said, ‘I was going this way anyway.’

She had given him a wry smile, and he had thought, Spider-kinden women.

Gaved had handed his copy of Nivit’s notes to the fretting Moth-kinden, to show that he was at least earning his keep, then he had trekked back through the rain to Nivit’s place, to make further plans.

An hour later found him having planned what little he could, agreeing with Nivit about who should be looked into and who avoided, or who amongst the Skater’s old contacts might have heard a rumour or two about where and when. Beyond that they had settled into talking over old times.

‘I swear, I’m staying this time, once this job’s done,’ Gaved declared.