He stopped talking, feeling the pull of concentration build up between them. He was straining now, his heart knocking in his chest. It was so very long since he had done anything like this, and it was like trying to gather a great thing and push it up a steep slope. His students were little help, doubtful, embarrassed, reluctant to look at the darkness within themselves, and more than that, there was the great and overarching ceiling that was Collegium, city of progress and science, of merchants and scholars and artificers, and a hundred thousand people who did not believe.

It was no good, he realized. He had not the strength to force his own will out of the city, let alone onto the Ants. He was too old and had been too long amongst these people.

Now his one chance to aid in the defence of his home was faltering. His students were beginning to shuffle as the silence dragged.

He called out, in his mind, If there is some power that hears me, please help me, for I have not the strength! I will promise what you ask, but help me, please!

He heard one of them, the Spider girl, draw her breath in hurriedly, and then there was a sudden pain in his skull that made him arch his back and choke. It was cold, pure cold, reaching along his spine and prying its way into his eyes. He felt tears start and freeze on his cheeks. Something had grasped him with thorned hands that thrust into his mind.

And, despite all this pain he heard the words in his mind, a monstrous, mournful chorus that said: What is this that calls? What is this that begs of us?

I am Doctor Nicrephos of Collegium, he said desperately, because the pain and the pressure combined were on the point of stopping his heart. If you have strength then lend it to me, for my city is under threat and I would send my thoughts onto our enemy. Please, if you know any pity, lend me your strength!

How bold you are, the voices said. Old man, you have not so many breaths yet to draw. Why seek to save that which will so soon outlive you? We have no pity but we do have strength. What claim have you on us?

Ask what you will, Doctor Nicrephos promised. Please aid me, and I shall do as you ask.

He felt his request hang in the balance. He knew his students had all felt this change too, that the room was cold enough for frost to form on the curtains, and that their breaths were pluming visibly in the dim air.

We shall aid you, but you shall perform a task for us – and it may mean your death that much sooner.

He would have agreed, he was sure, but they were not seeking his agreement. The compact is made, the dirge of the voices continued, and he felt the cold, that had already tested the limits of his tolerance, double and redouble, flood into the room, through his students, and then out, across the city and the walls, to poison the minds of the Ants. It fought its way clear of the great mass of disbelief that cloaked Collegium, and set about the work he had planned for it, and he knew that the Ants would not sleep easily tonight, nor for many nights to come, because the nightmares that his new ally could bring forth were worse by far than the feeble horrors that he and his students could dream up.

Home at last. Stenwold made himself a cup of hot herb tea, hearing Balkus stomp into the spare room and collapse on his bedroll, probably still wearing his armour. He should have been bodyguarding all day, but Stenwold had told him to fight up on the wall, and Balkus – Sarnesh Ant-kinden at heart – had been only too happy to empty his nailbow at the Vekken. More than that, of course, as there had been savage close-quarters fighting there and Balkus had been in the thick of it, holding the line on the north wall. A head taller than almost all the other fighters, with a shortsword in one hand and a captured Vekken shield in the other, the man had provided a tower of strength for the defenders.

Stenwold sipped his tea, found it bitter, and poured more than a capful of almond spirits into it. He needed to sleep tonight, because tomorrow would be no more forgiving to his nerves. Perhaps Balkus would die, or Kymon. Perhaps he, Stenwold, would.

Tired as he was, he toyed with the idea of it actually being a relief. With Graden’s suicide, though, he could not fool himself that way.

He drained the cup. He knew he should be hungry, but he was too tired for it, too numbed by exhaustion.

I am not cut from this military cloth. The sight of the dead sickened him, whether their own or the enemy’s. Brave men and women all, doing what they were instructed was right, and Stenwold, of all people, knew how history wrote over such victims, and the truth of whether they had been right or wrong got washed away in the tide of years.

I hope Tisamon is doing better than I am. He felt the absence of the Mantis-kinden keenly. Yes, the man was intolerant, difficult and primitive in his simplistic concepts of the world, but he was loyal, and could be a good listener, and Stenwold had known him a long time.

He levered himself up and trudged his way up the stairs, kicking his ash-blackened boots off halfway, knowing that he would trip over them in the morning but too depressed to care. He left his leather coat hanging over the banister. His helm remained downstairs on the kitchen table.

He slogged on into the darkness of his room, unbuckling his belt, and stopped.

He was not alone.

In the darkness, with even the moon tightly shuttered out, he felt fear. A Vekken assassin? A Wasp assassin? Thalric, perhaps? He had been given no time, these past days, to brood on such danger. What better opportunity than this to do away with him? Stenwold reached for his sword and recalled that it was still with his coat, ten yards and as good as a thousand miles away.

And then another part of his mind whispered something. Was it a familiar sound, or a scent, that informed it?

‘Arianna?’ he said hoarsely. When there was no reply he fumbled for a lantern and lit it with three strokes of his steel lighter, his hands trembling.

She was sitting at the end of his bed, a young and slender Spider girl with ginger hair cut short, gazing at him with wretched indecision.

‘Did… they send you to…?’ he got out.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Stenwold, I… didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

Ludicrously, he felt his unbelted breeches slipping, and tugged them up hurriedly. ‘But… you could have escaped?’

‘The Vekken would have killed me if they caught me – all the more so because Thalric is with them now. And… I have nowhere to go, Stenwold. I am outcast from my homeland and a traitor to the Rekef. And to you, also. I have nobody left to turn to.’

‘Except me?’

She looked up at him. He momentarily thought that she might try to flirt with him, or speak of the connection they supposedly had shared, but there was now nothing but mute pleading in her eyes.

‘Arianna, I-’

‘You can’t trust me, I know. I could be an assassin. I could still be spying for the Rekef. Stenwold, I am at the end of everything now, and I have no more. Because I tried, in my stupid, small way, to save Collegium – and I got it wrong, just like everything else.’

He put the lantern on his reading table, words failing him. There was too much, far too much, going on within him. He no longer felt tired, but more wide awake than he had been in days. He was trying now to navigate through a maze of pity, caution and a lecherous recollection of their time together that shocked him with its potency. He had thought himself past such yearnings, and yet seeing her here, against all odds and beyond any common sense, was an aphrodisiac, a tonic to an aging man.

If she is my enemy, I cannot give in to these feelings. And if she was truly as desperate as she claimed, how wrong would it be to take advantage of that? Of Arianna the student of the College.