Sfayot nodded, taking a moment to plan his attack. ‘There is a matter…’

‘I thought there might be. Speak now, while I’m in a mellow mood.’

‘I wish to travel west, and not be put in irons. Perhaps some papers, a licence to trade…’

‘Towards the front?’ Malic was frowning. ‘That’s not wise.’

‘I am aware of that.’

‘There’s a market, certainly, but it’s ugly, that ways.’ The Wasp’s eyes narrowed. ‘But it’s not just for profits, is it, Yot? Or you’d unload here and head back east. What’s going on?’ He had a hand on the barrel-table between them, resting on its wrist and tilted slightly up. If Sfayot had meant any treachery just then, the Wasp’s sting would have answered it.

‘You know how we Roach-kinden live,’ Sfayot said carefully. ‘How we travel with our families, and meet, and trade.’

‘And get moved on,’ Malic added. ‘And steal, and sometimes exhaust the patience of the local garrison.’

‘It is just as you say,’ Sfayot confirmed mildly. ‘My family were travelling near here, travelling and trading. One of our number was unwise, and she wandered from our camp. I have heard she was taken up.’

Malic looked at him for a long while. ‘I do remember a white-haired girl,’ he said at last. Sfayot nodded encouragingly and the Wasp continued, ‘That Slave Corps man had her with him, Sergeant Ban, his name was. You know that much, I take it.’

The Roach-kinden nodded. He was white haired as well, although in his case it could pass for age. It was a mark of the Roach-kinden: white hair and tan skin and restless feet. Sfayot was old for it, though; too old for the journey that he was considering. Lean and snow-bearded, dressed in shabby, patched clothes of green and brown and grey, he knew he looked like a beggar standing before this well-dressed Wasp whose black-and-gold tunic was worn over looted Dragonfly satins.

‘My daughter,’ Sfayot said softly, watching the other man’s face. ‘She is but thirteen years.’

Malic nodded, taking a little more wine, and his face was not without sympathy. ‘Then, yes, Ban’s gone west to pick up another chain. Seems like every Slave Corps man is headed that way, and I hear they still have more prisoners than they know what to do with. I’d guess he saw your lass and took a shine to her. Slave Corps,’ he added, with faint disgust. ‘You understand, in the Empire even the worst have a role to play, and the slavers are that role. I remember she was a pretty enough lass, for a Roach.’

Sfayot said nothing.

‘Means she’s more likely to stay whole on the trip,’ Malic noted. ‘Unless she catches the eye of some officer on the road, Ban will want to get her back to the good markets, back home. At this end we’re glutted with slaves, you can’t give them away. What will you do when you find Ban?’ The question was thrown in without warning and Malic was regarding him keenly.

‘Offer him a good price,’ Sfayot said without hesitation. ‘I am not a Wasp. My people do not fight or demand vengeance or harbour grudges. We cannot afford such luxuries.’

Malic’s face had a strange look on it, almost a sad one. ‘I’ll give you papers to trade,’ he said abruptly, ‘and to travel. I wish you luck, Yot. I hope you find her, and I hope she’s not too damaged when you do.’ There was something about his manner which suggested that he might have done as much even without the wine. Greedy, corrupt men, as opposed to upright, honest soldiers, had more leeway for spontaneous kindnesses as well as private evils.

Sfayot watched him sign the scroll, sealing it with black wax and the Consortium’s imprint.

He had lied to Malic, of course, but only a little, in details that would have complicated matters. The girl had not simply wandered off. Roach-kinden knew better than that. Their roving lifestyle, across the Empire and the Commonweal both, was to avoid the persecutions of government. In the Empire it didn’t do to stay too long in one place, lest someone decided that made you their property. You stuck with your family because they were all you could rely on.

Sfayot’s family had been in the little village of Nalfers – Nal Fra as was – when something had gone wrong. It was an occupied town with a garrison, but the Wasps had apparently decided it needed sacking anyway. Perhaps orders had been misunderstood, perhaps the local troops had gotten drunk and leery. In any event, nobody would be visiting either Nalfers or Nal Fra any more, and when Sfayot’s family had finally regrouped the next morning, within sight of the rising smoke, he discovered that a cousin and a nephew were dead, and that his daughter was missing. A niece had seen her dragged off by a slaver, the man’s trade made unmistakable by his full-face helm.

His family had begged Sfayot not to go looking for her, since it soon became clear where the slaver was headed. The Roach families did not go near the warfront: there was nothing for them there. The advancing plough-blade of war made a barrier they could not cross, and what was left exposed on the upturned earth behind it was rumoured to be worse than the fighting itself. The Wasps were a hard, wild people. Their army forced them to obey orders when they were on duty, and so when they were released from it they became monsters.

But Sfayot had left his younger brother to take the caravan east, and had set off in slow pursuit. He was old, and it had seemed unlikely he would ever achieve any great thing in his life. Perhaps retrieving his daughter could be that thing. Certainly if he died, and he accepted this was likely, then the loss to his family would not be great: one less mouth to feed during a harsh season.

The roads to the front were clogged with soldiers and army transports: reinforcements heading for the front, slaves and plunder being escorted home again. Sfayot passed smoke-belching automotives with cages full of thin, dispirited Dragonfly- and Grasshopper-kinden, men and women destined to feed the Empire’s infinite capacity for human servitude. He did not approach the slavers, for there was room enough in those cages for an inquisitive old Roach-kinden, but he asked many questions of others about a white-haired girl, and sometimes he got answers.

He found a military camp a few nights later, and peddled his wine to the Wasp officers, showing them his papers. Malic had been better than his word, it seemed. The conduct passes were faultless, and he was neither robbed nor beaten, more than a Roach-kinden would normally expect from Wasps anywhere. Eventually he fell in with a squad of Bee-kinden Auxillians from Vesserett in the East Empire, who were surely hundreds of miles further from home than anyone else. The Bees of Vesserett had a proud and embattled history, and at one time had looked to be in a position to destroy the burgeoning Wasp Empire almost before it began. These men, though, short and dark and weatherbeaten, were simply tired. When Sfayot was able to talk of their homeland, that he had seen more recently than they, they let him into their circle and drank his health. After his questions had gone around the fire someone called over a tiny Fly-kinden man because ‘Ferro knows everything’. Ferro was not in uniform, and Sfayot understood he was a freelance hunter engaged in tracking down absconding or hiding Dragonfly nobles. The Empire had determined that certain Commonweal bloodlines must be terminated without scion, and so experienced professionals like Ferro were making a healthy living.

Ferro was as good as his reputation. He had seen such a girl, and he named Sergeant Ban without prompting. They had gone to Shona, he said, Shon Aeres as had been, and maybe Ban was going to fill his string of slaves there. A bad place, Shona, Ferro confided – did Sfayot know it?

‘Only before the war,’ the Roach replied guardedly.

Ferro nodded, abruptly nostalgic. ‘Ah, before the war this was a beautiful country. I stayed at the castles of the nobility, at their summer retreats. I tracked brigands for them.’ He drank more of Sfayot’s wine with the expression of a connoisseur. ‘Now it is those same nobles I hunt down like animals, so the Wasps can hang them on crossed pikes. So the wheel turns.’ It was clear that Ferro’s sense of balance enabled him to walk the wheel as it ground over those less fortunate.