There was a thoughtful pause amongst the other advisers.

‘I cannot vouch for the quality of their troops, but you will understand that this was a single lord. If our precipitate, mnn, action should prompt a unification amongst such families, well…’

It was help from an unexpected direction, but Maxin would take it. He turned to the centrepoint of the advisers’ crescent of chairs and asked, ‘Your Imperial Majesty, what would you have us do?’

Alvdan started from his reverie. He had taken no part in the discussions, and Maxin knew just what it was that so consumed him. What the Mosquito was offering him, impossible as it sounded, far outweighed these mundane debates. ‘What would you advise, General?’ the Emperor responded eventually.

‘Perhaps an official embassy should be sent to these Spider-kinden. No doubt they want something from us, some recognition or tithe. We can buy them now and take back our gold at our leisure. We have done it before.’

There were no strong objections, and the Emperor put his seal on the plan. The Fourth Army would stay put, and General Alder would fret, but Alder was Reiner’s man, Maxin knew. The glory of the Lowlands would go to General Malkan when he took first Sarn and then Collegium. But Malkan had always been one of Maxin’s retinue, and he was the youngest and keenest general the Empire possessed.

Maxin was careful not to leave in Odyssa’s company, for that would have raised too many questions. He met her eyes, though, and nodded to show that he approved of her performance. He gave a nod to old Gjegevey too, before he left.

As for Gjegevey, he made a great show of being slow to rise and the last to leave, and when he left, Odyssa was waiting for him.

‘I thought it must be you,’ she murmured softly. ‘My message was that the Lord-Martial had a man amongst the imperial advisers.’

‘As you yourself said,’ Gjegevey murmured, ‘any man who plays politics with the, hmm, Spider-kinden, is liable to find himself caught in webs.’ He smiled. ‘What a pair of, mmn, traitors we are.’

‘To who?’ she asked. ‘Do you honestly think, O scholar, that you know where my loyalties lie?’

Even speaking to her I feel myself ensnared, Gjegevey thought.

Felyal had an uncertain relationship with the sea, and held no firm borders. The wall of greenery their boat coasted past was inundated now, the brackish waters reaching far inland with the high tide. When the waters receded, the trees would be left suspended on their spidery roots amongst a mudscape of burrows and discarded shells.

Outsiders used the name and made no distinction, but Tynisa learned that ‘Felyal’ was the Mantis Hold, and that ‘the Felyal’ was the wood itself, just as that other place far north-east of here was the Darakyon. There had been a Mantis hold there as well, once.

Their boat tacked closer and then further away, the Moth-kinden fisherman shading his eyes and watching the water carefully. At last he found a channel running into the wood, and guided the boat twenty yards along it before throwing a line out to loop over a branch.

‘This is as far as I can take her,’ he explained. Tisamon paid him a handful of coins, and then stepped out onto one of the arching roots, holding an arm back for Tynisa to clutch at.

It was an awkward journey until they passed the high-tide mark, stepping half in muddy water and half on the projections of the trees, seeing the swirl of creatures moving in the murk, and slapping at mosquitoes that hung in the air as big as hands. They clambered and scrambled inland with best speed, walking from root to root, jumping channels that were thick with mud and motion. The air glittered with life. Dragonflies skimmed the waters for fish drawn in by the tide, and butterflies like ragged brown cloaks hunted through the canopy for the open blooms of flowers.

They reached land, at last, and if it was not dry it was at least solid, past the furthest intrusions of the sea. The trees progressed from the stilted marsh-dwellers to broader and more familiar breeds. There was a weight to them, an ancient crookedness, that returned errant thoughts of the Darakyon to Tynisa, and she shook them off uncomfortably.

‘What lives here, besides your people?’ she asked.

‘Our namesakes,’ Tisamon said briefly. ‘Beyond those two, there is nothing to worry you.’

‘No ghosts?’ she asked. ‘Spirits?’

Tisamon turned back to her. ‘The mystics teach us that there are ghosts and spirits everywhere,’ he said. ‘But no, this is not like that place.’

She would have asked more, but then the Mantis-kinden found them. She only knew about it when Tisamon moved, the metal claw abruptly in place and at the ready. She had the sense of sudden flight, the sound of metal on metal.

Everything stopped. She could see nothing, though her sword had leapt to her hand. Claw cocked back, Tisamon was standing before her, tense as a taut wire.

There, by his feet, was a broken arrow. It had been meant for her.

‘Where is your honour?’ Tisamon shouted out, genuinely angry. ‘Come forth that I may see what my kinden have become!’

There were five of them, three women and two men, all of them within a few years of her own age. They had bows, strings drawn back to the ear, and not the little bows of Flyor Moth-kinden, but bows as tall as they were, and they were all of them tall. They were fair too, as Tisamon was, and as she was also. Her features were Spider-kinden, though, while theirs were composed of the same angles as his: sharp-chinned, sharp-eared, narrow-eyed. A kind of austere grace, like a statue’s, was theirs, but without the warmth to make them seem human. They wore greens and greys, and one had a cuirass of black-enamelled metal scales.

Their leader stared at Tisamon with eyes narrowed. ‘What filth is this? What do you want here?’ she asked, regarding Tisamon without any love. Then her gaze passed to Tynisa and she spat at her feet. ‘No Spiders in the Felyal,’ she said. ‘We had thought that decree would not be forgotten.’ The other four arrowheads were directed unwavering at Tynisa’s head, waiting only for the nod.

‘Look again at her,’ Tisamon urged quietly. The Mantis woman shot him a hostile glance, but her eyes twitched over Tynisa, and came to rest on the brooch.

‘What is this?’ she demanded.

‘We must speak to the elders of Felyal,’ Tisamon said calmly.

‘And if they will not speak to you?’ The woman’s comrades were slowly lowering their bows, relaxing the strain on their strings. They could see, from that one badge, that this situation was more than they themselves could decide on. There was a wildness to their eyes, though. That the mark of a Weaponsmaster could be borne by a Spider was hateful to them, Tynisa understood. She saw also that they did not even consider that she might have acquired it by forgery or theft, that badge. That she sported it meant that she had earned it, and she wondered just what might happen to any unwise thief who tried to claim such a symbol undeservedly.

‘If they will not see us, then that shall be what they choose,’ Tisamon said. ‘I myself know the way, but if you wish to escort us, so be it.’

‘You, perhaps, but she may not come. She may live this time, but send her back to the sea,’ the woman snarled.

Tisamon shook his head. ‘You cannot deny that symbol, and don’t make either of us prove it to you.’

The Mantis woman looked rebellious for a further moment, her jaw stuck out aggressively. Then she signalled, and one of her band ran off into the trees.

‘We are watching you,’ she hissed at Tynisa. ‘If you try to run, we shall kill you.’

‘Why would I need to run?’ asked Tynisa, trying to muster icy disdain and meanwhile hoping her nerves did not show. She had always known this, how Mantis-kinden hated the Spiders. Everyone knew it and nobody knew why, but the grievance went back deep into the Days of Lore, the enmity’s roots impossible to tug out and examine.