‘Achaeos, you have not been true to your kinden, and we do not condone what you have done. However, you have not earned exile, not yet,’ said the Skryre. ‘Against our judgment and against our interests, you have found something worth studying. The accusations are stayed, for now.’

He sagged visibly in relief, and Che would, anywhere else, have gone to comfort him. She was still pinned by the gaze of the Skryre, though.

‘What of the Wasps?’ she asked.

‘You come late into this battle,’ the old woman told her. ‘They have already sent their emissaries to us. They have explained their plans, for the Hated Enemy. We have treated with them. They are a vile people, but they may have their uses.’

‘But-’ Che began helplessly.

‘But now you have spoken to us, and we must return to our counsels,’ said the Skryre. ‘We shall deliberate and chart our course, and consult the omens. And you shall meanwhile wait for our word.’

And the Skryres turned as one, and disappeared into the darkness whence they had come, and all about them, one by one, the Moths were lifting off, their wings flickering darkly, casting wild shadows from the lamps as they ascended, so that only the Mantis-kinden guards were left. Only then did Achaeos take hold of her sleeve and draw her away.

They had found Che a place to stay, and she suspected it was that part of Tharn where they usually housed foreigners. One wall was a lattice of carved stonework in the form of interlacing trees that framed an open doorway. The balcony beyond was edged only by a low ledge and she did not feel safe at all on it.

She had been grateful for the sunlight even though she had slept fitfully and badly in it. The back-to-front lives of the Moths were beyond her ability to get used to. Now the sun was casting the mountains’ shadows across all the land that she could see, as though dusk was pouring out from the Moths’ high kingdom and spreading over the world. The air, which had been chill before, was now becoming bitter, but there were Moths passing by, children even, going sandalled and in thin garments, heedless of a cold that they must have been used to since birth.

She sat close to the fire, on a rug woven of a soft fabric that Achaeos had explained was moth fur. She tried to imagine these serious people shaving the giant moths with great ceremony. At least it brought a smile to her face.

There had been no word yet from the Skryres, none at all, and she had seen little enough of Achaeos. When she had come to this place he had thanked her haltingly, awkwardly. She had not realized just how shaken he had been, having come back as the hero only to be treated as a criminal and a traitor.

He had left her there to sleep, but now she had been awake some hours and there was still no sign of him. Instead there were Moth servants, and occasionally she saw a Mantis, or one of the Spider-kinden. In place of the hostility that had blasted her earlier there was now a strange diffidence. They did not know what to do with her, but she had passed some crucial test. She was no longer the Hated Enemy. Neither she nor they, it seemed, were quite sure what she was.

Even as she thought this there was a fluttering at the balcony. Achaeos was there with the wind tugging at his hood and robe. She ran to him, changed her mind halfway, and ended up meeting him just inside the doorway.

‘Where have you been? Have you heard anything new?’

‘The Skryres deliberate still,’ he told her. ‘Or if they’ve finished I’ve had no word. I have been… talking with a great many people, though. A few sought me out, with their own concerns about the Wasps, willing to nock an arrow if need be. There are others, more I regret, who would rather the Skryres had come to a different decision concerning me. I have been going about my kin trying to calm waters…’ he smiled weakly, ‘and stitch wounds.’

‘Enemies? Who was that woman?’ she asked him. ‘What did you do to her, to make her hate you that much?’

He did not know who she meant, but when she added, ‘The advocate, whoever she was,’ he was quick to correct her.

‘It was nothing personal. I know her distantly, but we have hardly crossed paths. It is simply a role that someone must perform. I have done it myself. The advocate must accuse, must attack as fiercely as possible. The accused is supposed to resist these accusations with the truth. I did poorly because I was not prepared.’

‘But they wanted to do to you whatever they did to me. Did they read my mind, really?’ She was clinging to her rational heritage as best she could, but amongst this alien people, she could easily believe that magic lurked in every corner.

‘They did. It is the last defence of any, according to our law. The Skryres see all truth.’ He broke from her gaze then. ‘My motives are not so pure as I had told them. If they had seen… they would have cast me out. They may yet do so. My own people. I knew I was going beyond what they expected of me but…’ He went over before the fire, kneeling on the rug. ‘They were right, of course. I had been around foreigners too long. It alters the way the world appears.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve-’

‘You? You saved my life. More, you’ve done more to swing the balance here than I ever could. And perhaps a new way of looking at the world is no bad thing.’ With an awkward gesture he suggested she join him by the fire. It was strange, she thought, seeing him do anything awkwardly. All these old races, the faded inks of history, had such a grace about them. Ants were the lords of war in the Lowlands, but no Ant could fight like a Mantis. Beetles dealt and traded and brokered in every city, but they were grubby peddlers beside the elegance of the Spider-kinden, steeped in centuries of political devices. And whilst her own kinden loved lore and learning, and had founded the greatest institution devoted to knowledge in the whole world, still they did not possess the Moths’ reserved air of deeper understanding that pervaded this whole city.

And here now was Achaeos, who was all things: a raider, a scholar, a sorcerer – if he could be believed – and a rescuer. Since that first moment of seeing him in the stables, with his desperate, wounded defiance, she had romanticized him. Then he had travelled across all those dangerous miles for her, and the glowing image she had built of him, like any dreaming schoolgirl might, had been borne out. And here he was, as confused as she, coming to terms, just as she was, with a world larger than he had thought existed.

‘We trade our debts, we two,’ he said softly. ‘You aid me, I aid you. Now I have, like a fool, brought you to a place where both our lives hang by a spider’s thread and, here in my own homeland, you saved me.’

‘We don’t need to think of debts,’ she told him. ‘We… know each other too well.’ Even as she said it, she was not sure whether that was true.

‘I have a service I can perform for you. It may come to nothing, but you have said you have had little progress with the Ancestor Art.’

‘It’s no secret,’ she agreed. ‘I suppose there are always some like me.’

‘Of course, but amongst your people, where you have your thousands and more, it passes notice. Here each man and woman counts, for we are fewer than you think. We have ways of aiding meditation, of raising the mind to the correct state.’

‘You’re serious?’ She was wide-eyed now. ‘If you think there’s even the smallest chance that it could work I’ll do it, whatever it is. Please, Achaeos, you can’t imagine how long…’

He nodded. ‘You should sit and face the fire. Close your eyes, or stare into it, just as you prefer.’

She did so. When she closed her eyes the dancing of the fire came through her eyelids, more as the warmth that passed over her face than light itself. ‘What do I do next?’

‘Nothing. Relax and let your mind go… where it will…’ His voice seemed uncertain, but she kept her eyes shut.