‘What do you mean?’

‘He… She was holding you so I couldn’t shoot her, so that if I loosed a shot, I would hit you instead. The man who wrote that letter would never have done that.’

Che just stared at the letter, and tears rose unbidden. Her lip trembled.

‘I… am sorry,’ the Moth said awkwardly, ‘I have not served you well.’

She realized that she could hate him for this. She could make the absent Totho a martyr, the man she would have been with, if not for Achaeos. This was hanging as an option in her mind, and its sole purpose was to cover the shameful way that she had treated Totho before he left.

‘Please,’ she whispered, and held out her arms to him, and Achaeos held her tightly as she wept.

Magic was concentration, and the pain was savage and sharp. She dared not even touch the arrow. Scylis – Scyla as she truly was – had lost all of her masks when it drove into her, and she fell to the ground in nothing but her own body, all her disguises breached. In that moment of shock and agony it took all she possessed just to play dead.

When the Moth came over to her, she thought he would finish her off, but he had been more interested in that cursed letter than in making sure. She had lain there, dressed as her own corpse, and let him rifle her possessions and go back, so that the two of them could act out their little drama together. But it had given her time.

She had been hurt before, though never this badly. There were tricks, of the mind and of magic, to stave off the pain, to lock it away. The sands of her time were running out, because the Moth was no fool and sooner or later he would make sure.

It was a wretched effort, and yet it nearly killed her more surely than did the arrow. The force of will required made the arrowhead grate and contort inside her, but she rolled over, as the two of them stood embracing, and she cast off her skin behind her. Had they looked, had either of them even glanced just then, they would have seen two dead Scylas, and the game would have been up.

She shuddered, realizing she had no strength left for magic, but there was still the Art, the innate heritage of her people. She seldom called on it, with all the tools already at her disposal, and yet she had spent her due time in earnest meditation all those years ago, when even she had once been young.

She now called upon that Art that so many of the elder races owned, and felt herself fade and blend, the light sliding off her, the shadows cloaking her, the colours of the earth and the stones embracing her. It was a hunter’s Art, for ambush or sudden strike, but here and now its camouflage was her one weak chance at life. When they finally had eyes for anything other than each other, they looked over and saw only one corpse.

It could still have failed. If he had taken the time to cut her throat with his dagger then he would have found the flesh beneath his blade parting like mist. He was true to his kinden, though. He came with his bow and stood over her body, and he sent an arrow through that illusory forehead and into the ground. Just to be sure, as he must be thinking.

After they had gone, she stirred herself from hiding, feeling the shaft that was buried in her stab and grate. So much, she thought, for turning them against the Moth-kinden. She had killed the Fly, Marre, just to keep the Moths out of this fight, and so to strip Stenwold down to no more than the tattered remains of Scuto’s people. It had been easy, given her skills, to slip to and fro, and never have one of them wonder where solid, stupid Totho really was. It should have been a simple matter for her to kill the old man’s niece. Then Totho would have come back weeping to Stenwold with the terrible news, and the Moths would reap the blame.

She did not know, as she pushed herself to her feet, if she would last through this. The best of her training was deployed in keeping the pain at bay, but it was still a long walk to Helleron.

But if she reached Helleron, if her blood lasted that long, then she would find Thalric and she would enjoy what last revenge she could. For Stenwold now had the Wasp’s secret. He had admitted as much, and she believed him. She would let Thalric know that his enemies were onto him. She would make sure that Stenwold’s little pack of clowns would have a reception waiting for them, when they made their move.

They made their camp without fire, as they had for two nights, the two who were sleeping tucked close together by necessity, and the one who was left on watch shivering the hours out.

When Totho had caught them up, his explanations had been scant, and Salma had not pressed him further. From the Dragonfly’s expression he had guessed more than was admitted by Totho, and possibly the whole of the story. Salma had good eyes, Totho knew. He saw many things.

They were closing on Tark now, less than a tenday away. They had been keeping thus far to the well-used road but they had begun to encounter travellers with disturbing stories. There were soldiers ahead, soldiers that the better-travelled identified as imperial Wasps, who were turning the wayfarers back. Others, arriving from Tark, had seen dust on the horizon from a vast horde cutting across the Dryclaw. One Fly trader, tacitly a carrier of illicit goods, had been treading the same paths when he had seen them, and was able to give them a better account. A whole Wasp host was on the move, men marching along with Fly and Wasp airborne scouts, automotives, pack animals and war engines. They had Scorpion guides, an entire clan of them, leading them the best ways through the desert.

Until they had this eyewitness testimony, Stenwold’s speculations had not seemed entirely real. Now it was unclear whether they would reach Tark before or after the Wasp army, or maybe at the same time. Certainly the enemy outriders were already on the road ahead of them, isolating the city.

‘But Tark is an Ant city-state,’ Totho had protested. ‘Ants fight. It’s what they do best. To try to take their city is madness.’

Salma had just shaken his head. ‘The Wasps have run into Ant-kinden before. Near the Commonweal borders there’s an Ant city, Maynes, which the Wasps seized and used as their staging post to attack us. The Wasps have ways of defeating even Ant-kinden.’

The next day’s close put them within sight of Wasp soldiers. Half a dozen of them had staked out a bridge and were obviously ready to challenge anyone wanting to cross. They took turns to glide up into the air, circling lazily.

Skrill sucked her breath through her teeth. ‘You, Beetle-boy,’ she said. It was what she had taken to calling Totho. ‘You’re not the flying kind, I’ll wager, but can you swim?’ ‘A little. Not a whole river’s width.’ ‘Can you swim it if you hold on to something?’

He nodded dumbly.

‘These here, they’re to stop reinforcements, goods, supplies getting through, not people. His Lordship here’s got wings. He can pick a slice of the river and fly, and water’s nothing to stop me. This is the most fordable point of the river, though, and I know that ’cos this is where they put the bridge. So if we’re crossing, or if you’re crossing, it’s here. Got me?’

Totho and she put together a makeshift raft, big enough to float their packs across, with his legs providing the motive power.

‘Now, I’ll shadow you across the river,’ she said. ‘Your Lordship, you can meet us on the far side.’

Salma nodded, and swung into the air with his sword drawn, disappearing overhead.

Totho had no night vision whatsoever. The Wasps had a fire lit in the bowl of a metal shield laid on the bridge, though, and torches burning at either end. The night was chill and the guards had pulled into the bridge’s centre and the burning shield to take up the warmth.

He crept to the edge, balancing the raft across his shoulders. He had stripped to his waist, and his boots hung across his neck by their laces. Skrill flitted past him, a shapeless, cloaked ghost, still fully clad, but although he could hear the water ahead of him, he heard no splash.