Tynisa risked a glance at the other Mantids, and saw no hatred there. They did not cheer the fighters on, or wager, or discuss. Their entire attention was fixed on the battle, with nothing short of reverence.

And Tisamon caught the spear with his off-hand, just behind the head. The spearman had the chance for a moment’s surprise, started to drop the weapon and fall back, but Tisamon’s sweep cut the haft in two, and then he lunged forwards and the point of his claw caught the man outside the collarbone, driving deep into his shoulder so that the younger man’s already pale face went white with the pain and he fell back into the crowd.

Tisamon was already turning, claw crooked back again, as the third challenger came for him. She was armed with a rapier, and Tynisa saw that it was a match in style for the weapon she herself bore, down to the leaden-coloured, slightly shortened blade. Tisamon rose to meet her with an expression that was madness and ecstasy combined, a bloodlust and a joy in the fight that chilled Tynisa and called to her equally.

They were faster now, twice the speed of the first duel, as Tisamon changed pace to keep up with the flickering of the rapier’s narrow blade. The woman across from him was older than the previous two, but a good ten years his junior nonetheless, and she did not fence as Tynisa had learned, with careful feet and a rapid hand. Instead she flew, figuratively and literally. She made her sword into a lattice of steel about her, using the edge more than the point, letting its momentum lead her body where it would, and then the wings would explode from her back and carry her over Tisamon’s head, landing and thrusting or cutting even as he turned, and they were moving faster and faster, until Tynisa could not breathe.

She never realized that her own face had slipped into the same almost religious expression worn by all of the others, or that she had released her rapier hilt to clasp her hands over the brooch of sword and circle.

Tisamon ducked and drove in, trying to step inside the reach of his adversary’s blade, and she would not let him, and yet when he walked into the razoring steel of her guard, he stepped through it unscathed and she fell back as the spearman had, before driving him away again. Her eyes were almost closed. The patter of steel on steel was a constant staccato that had almost become music.

She took flight again, and this time Tisamon leapt with her, lashing out with his full reach, and they came down together, frozen in a single slice of time.

His claw was over her back, folded so that the point touched near her spine, but held just short, cutting her cuirass but not her skin. The spines of his right arm had drawn blood where her shoulder met her neck.

Her blade was along the line of his throat, his head tilted back so that the flat was against his cheek, the point running through his hair. Her off-hand and his were locked together, spines meshed with spines, between their bodies. Only then did Tynisa notice that the woman wore the same badge that Tisamon did – that she herself did.

The Mantis woman’s wings flickered and died, and they stood very still, both looking past her at the Loquae.

An almost crippling sense of vertigo hit Tynisa, because she recognized that look, recognized the moment. It took her back to the Prowess Forum, duelling some other student with wooden swords, and at the end of the pass they would look over at Kymon to see how they had done, to read his reaction.

Just a game, she thought, but the woman he had fought first was dead, and the man badly injured, and now there was a razor edge to Tisamon’s throat, and yet he was looking calmly at the old woman to see how he had done.

The Loquae closed her eyes for a moment. She was clearly not happy, but something had been resolved. ‘You are one of us,’ she said at last. ‘What you have done is a heinous thing, but there is no denying that you still have a place here. What would you ask of us, Tisamon of Felyal?’

‘That you give my daughter the same chance to prove herself,’ Tisamon said simply, as the blade of the rapier was withdrawn and he stepped away from his opponent.

‘You should not have come back,’ the Loquae reproached him. They were in her home, a hut cut into two rooms by a wall pierced by a common firepit. ‘Whatever you have proved, to us, to yourself, today, it would have been better if you had never returned.’

Tisamon listened to the clatter and scrape of sword on sword, keeping a watchful eye through the doorway. ‘If it had just been myself, Loquae, you would not have seen me again. But I have a responsibility to her. She is mine.’

The Loquae made a scornful noise. ‘None of her looks.’

‘Watch her,’ Tisamon urged: Tynisa was fighting, rapier to rapier, against a Mantis youth of her own age. It was her third bout: the other two had ended with blood, almost to the death. She had taken two shallow cuts, to her shoulder, to her side. She had not deigned to acknowledge them.

‘The Spider-kinden woman that broke you must have been remarkable,’ the Loquae said drily.

‘She was not like others of her kind.’

‘You mean she was able to fool you,’ the Loquae said. ‘Be careful not to presume too much on our acceptance, Tisamon. You were given a fair and balanced chance to prove yourself. If I had decided to draw my own blade against you, matters would have been different.’

Tisamon nodded, conceding that point. For a moment the two of them watched Tynisa catching her opponent’s blade in hers and twisting it from his hand. The Mantis-kinden watching her wore expressions of loathing, but still they watched.

‘She can never be one of us. She can never be more than abomination,’ the Loquae reiterated. ‘Still, you have given her our skill, and she cannot be denied the badge.’ She sighed. ‘So, Tisamon, what do you want? I know you have not come here solely to flaunt your halfbreed daughter.’

‘I wish to speak to the elders,’ Tisamon said. ‘All of them. It is possible they will never hear a more important word spoken.’

They gathered in the hall that was the only building there built even partly from stone aside from the smithy. Stones that had been laid in the Age of Lore centuries before rose to four feet, and wood often replaced made a broad and sloping roof from there on up, so that, to be upright, all but the smallest had to stand along the central line. The Mantis-kinden spent much of their lives outdoors, beneath the trees, and they were not builders.

Nine of the Felyal elders had gathered there that night, seven women and two men. This was not all of them, but all of those who could be reached in such short time. Several of them wore the badge of the Weaponsmasters. Tynisa was kept outside, hunched by the door to hear, but barred from the council itself. She had not been perfunctorily slain, and she understood that she had reached the limit of Mantis acceptance thereby.

‘I am come to speak with you of the Wasp Empire,’ Tisamon began. ‘You have heard of them, surely, these Wasp-kinden from the east?’

‘We have,’ said one of the elders, the youngest of the women there, though still a dozen years Tisamon’s senior.

‘You may also have heard then that they have attacked the Ant city of Tark,’ Tisamon said.

‘Tark is fallen, this we have heard too,’ said one of the men. ‘Those fleeing its destruction have passed our Hold. We have not heard more yet of Merro or Egel but it is possible that these too have fallen.’

This news shook Tisamon. ‘Then matters are worse than I had feared. They will come here.’

‘They have already come here,’ said the Loquae, who was an elder in her own right. ‘They have sent men to speak with us and make their peace.’

‘You must not believe them,’ Tisamon told them. ‘They will tell you that they only wish harm to others, perhaps even to our enemies, to the Spiderlands even, but they lie. They wish to conquer all of the Lowlands. They do not recognize allies or peers, only enemies and slaves.’