They, none of them, understand my kind, Odyssa thought, for they are all amateurs, playing in the shallows. Our webs are invisible to the best of them, Lowlands intelligencers and Rekef spymasters alike. The Ants think we do it for power, and the Beetles think we do it for money, and the Mantids think we do it from spite, but they none of them understand that we do what we do simply because it amuses us to live this way, and because we are jaded…

There was the sound she had been waiting for: a low, slumberous droning noise up high and distant in the sky, coming with the wind from the north, as though some insect of unheard-of size was making its patient way towards the coast of the Exalsee. It was not, despite imperial claims, the largest thing ever to fly. The Beetles of the Lowlands had larger that they used for transport and freight. It was the largest thing to fly solely for war, though. The Wasps were an unimaginative people, but their artificers sometimes had a spark of poetry in their souls, and thus they had named the thing Starnest.

To the north, the army would have already taken the mountain-pass trading post of Toek, scattering or cowing the Scorpion-kinden who used the place as bandit’s lair and toll-house. That was a mere diversion, an afterthought, however. She was hearing the vanguard of the true assault even now.

To think that one can brew war out of only a pair of Lowlander agents and a dead Rekef officer. But the Wasps were so predictable: prod their nest enough and they would sally out of it, raging for battle. She wondered how far the colonel would search for evidence of the great enemy plot to suborn Solarno for Lowlander purposes. Once he had secured his governorship, perhaps he would not even care.

The droning was louder now, and she wondered how many in Solarno had woken to it, or paused in their nocturnal vices to listen. The sound of an airship was not so rare, hereabouts.

She only hoped that Teornis had played his part as well. He had a more complex net to cast by far, and he was only a man, after all, for all his noble blood.

It was close to dawn and she must leave now, or risk herself being caught in the web she had so carefully spun. Odyssa turned on her heel and headed for the city docks, where a small fishing boat was already waiting for her. Its captain had no idea how fortunate he was to be leaving Solarno right now for Porta Mavralis.

Odyssa smiled at that. It was her gift, she supposed, to spread good fortune wherever she went.

In Che’s dream she was by a very different lake, the details of which seemed to fade in and out of focus. From somewhere there was a terrible voice calling, and she felt a tug inside her every time it cried out. That tug was what bound her to Achaeos, and she knew that the great voice was calling for him, drawing him to it.

In her dream, she was hunting desperately through hovel-lined streets, trying to find him before the voice did. The air was full of glittery little knives that she realized were raindrops, all held fixed in place. She had the sense of frantic movement all around her, as though parties unknown had broken into her dream, and were ransacking it for something they had lost.

The terrible voice called out again, closer this time, and she caught sight of a grey-robed figure flitting ahead of her, drawn helplessly closer to the monstrous summons. She cried out his name, but the beckoning voice drowned her out with its wordless yearning.

She saw, ahead, something that belonged only in dreams, and only in the worst of them, something that shifted and writhed with thorns, an abomination still recognizable as human. Achaeos was approaching it almost eagerly, and she screamed at him in warning and tried to run, but pain began to flower all about her. The raindrops had turned into wasps and they were stinging her, forcing her away. The combined hum of their wings had turned into a thunderous buzz…

‘Che! Che! Get up, now!’

She jolted awake, staring into the darkness, forgetting for a moment that she could banish it with a thought.

She banished it instantly. There was Taki standing in the doorway, her hair wild and uncombed, her canvas flight-clothes still unbuttoned after being so hastily donned.

‘What?’

‘Che!’ the Fly-kinden shouted at her. ‘Get up. Get your stuff! Just do it, please!’

Then she was gone, and Che could hear behind the Fly woman’s pattering footsteps the sounds of fighting: sword striking sword, the cry of someone in pain.

Inside the building.

Che was abruptly out of bed, wearing nothing more than a tunic, hearing the house of the Destiavel come under attack.

More than fighting, though… what am I hearing? But the fighting itself was coming closer, and it blotted out whatever telltale sound she had caught. Hastily she grabbed her artificer’s leathers from the low table where the house servants had folded them, struggling into them as best she could, finding them suddenly too small, too starched, snagging her fingers in the arms. She thrust her head back into the open and began buckling the leathers at one side, the latches clumsily slipping in her grasp.

She looked up as someone appeared at her door, and froze on realizing it was not Taki. This was a Solarnese man wearing a white tunic and trousers, with a slim curved sword in his hand. The dim light from the corridor showed that his sash and flat-topped hat were dyed blue: the Crystal Standard, Genissa’s political enemies.

Bare-legged still, and with her leathers flapping loose, Che dived for her sword, snagging it off the table and wrenching at it desperately, hoping that it would simply slide smoothly from its scabbard for once. It did not oblige, and the whole baldric came with it. As she lashed it sideways to free the blade, she whipped the startled man across the face with the weighted buckle of the belt.

She would never know what he might have done otherwise, but after that affront he came for her, rushing forward with his curved sword dancing in a flicker. With another great heave, she swept her own blade, sheath, baldric and all, in its way, and the strap tangled about his sword so that they were drawn in close, face to snarling face. As his hand went to his belt for his dagger, she finally drew her own sword from the tangled scabbard and ran it straight into his stomach.

She remembered to keep good hold of the hilt this time, so that his own weight pulled him off the blade. She looked towards the half-open door and saw Nero standing there, still bandaged from his wound, and looking a little surprised.

‘What’s going on?’ she panted.

‘The politics hereabouts seem to have gone to the wastes overnight,’ he said, looking every bit as baffled as she was. ‘Taki wants us out of here,’ he added, and to Che that seemed to be as good an idea as any.

She finished dressing hurriedly and the two of them got to the main atrium of the Destiavel house without meeting any other enemies, although they had seen plenty of bodies by then. That was when Taki found them, rushing up with Dalre and a handful of the house guards at her back. ‘We have to leave,’ the Fly girl urged. ‘Have to get out of the house, now.’

‘No argument here,’ Nero assured her.

‘What’s happened? Why is the Standard attacking you?’

‘The Standard?’ Taki was gaping at her in disbelief. ‘You think that’s what this is? That pack of clowns?’

‘Then what…?’ Che began, but Taki was already running ahead, shouting for them to follow her.

There was still fighting at the main door, but Taki had found a side-door that was clear, and they got out into the street unmolested. Instantly three of their guards were dashing off around the side of the house, to catch the attackers at the front unawares. Dalre and a solid-looking Solarnese man stayed with them.