The rope tightened, the barbed tines digging into him, and then the Fly had a shortsword drawn and was flying straight towards him, even as Stenwold choked and tried desperately to dislodge the hook. Balkus was…

Balkus was staring strangely, his nailbow hanging loose in his hands. Stenwold shouted at him for help, but his face had gone slack, utterly devoid of expression.

The Fly was abruptly crouching on top of him, his sword clutched in both hands like an outsized dagger. Stenwold groped for him, seeing only a careful concentration on the man’s flat face. With one hand still on the entangling hook, Stenwold got his other hand on one of the Fly’s wrists. For a moment the man was pushing down against him, the tip of the sword descending until it touched Stenwold’s chest.

There was a woman pointing at Balkus, a Moth woman. She was approaching him with a dagger in one hand, but her other was directed at him, so that the power of her Art held him immobile as she approached. She was speaking words that Stenwold could not hear and the big Ant just stared back at her with a glazed expression. In the Moth woman’s hand the dagger’s glistening blade was smeared with something black. She was smiling all the while.

With a supreme effort Stenwold halted the sword’s further descent, locking his own arm and pushing up against the smaller man’s wrist whilst still hauling at the hook with his free hand. The Fly-kinden’s teeth were bared in a snarl and he was remarkably strong for one of his small kind. Suddenly he grinned and simply took up the sword one-handed, leaving Stenwold clutching the useless wrist of an empty hand. Stenwold yanked at it furiously, putting the man off his stroke so that the sword just clipped his ear, but then the Fly’s wings flashed out to steady him, and he drew the blade back for one final strike.

Arianna’s knife flashed, and the Fly-kinden arched backwards, the weapon spinning from his hands. She struck again and again in fierce desperation as he screamed and bucked, knocking himself off Stenwold’s chest. For a moment he was scrabbling about on the floor to retrieve his dropped sword, his back now a welter of red, and then finally she drove her blade into his side up to the hilt with a cry of revulsion.

Stenwold was aware of Doctor Nicrephos shouting something, and he felt a wave of cold surge through him that had every hair on his body standing on end. The Moth woman cursed in frustration, and lunged her dagger forwards just as Balkus snapped out of his trance. It was a hasty blow she delivered that skittered harmlessly from his mail, and in automatic response the nailbow boomed, sending her flying backwards with a bloody hole punched all the way through her.

‘Stenwold!’ the old Moth cried. ‘Help me!’ Stenwold staggered to his feet, looking around for the old man. For a brief moment he saw Doctor Nicrephos wrestling with a shadowy figure, and then a blade flashed and the Moth was reeling back, his robe bloodied. Stenwold had a brief glimpse of a Spider-kinden man – no, a Spider-kinden woman? It was impossible in that moment to tell. He roared out a challenge, and Balkus shot another bolt at the same time, but the Spider dodged nimbly, running for the open door with something under his – or her – arm. As Stenwold charged, she – it was definitely a she – turned and flung something at him that struck him in the chest and instantly he was falling, tangled and stuck in strands of fine, sticky silk. A moment later, the Wasp-kinden man was running after the Spider, slipping through the door just before Balkus’ nailbow destroyed the doorframe in three separate places.

Arianna crouched by him, her eyes wide. ‘Who was that?’ she gasped. ‘What is going on?’ Only Doctor Nicrephos knew that, Stenwold thought painfully, for he could still see the old man from where he lay, and there was no doubt that the Moth was dead. As for who that was, though… surely it can’t be… It could not be, he decided. It must be some other of the same order, for Achaeos had sworn that he had killed the face-shifting spy who had plagued them in Helleron.

A spy in Helleron. A spy in Myna. Now a spy in Collegium. The coincidence was there already, so how much further for it to have all been the work of one man – or one woman? And how difficult was it for a master of disguise to play dead?

Arianna was patiently disentangling him from the Art-made web, and after a moment Balkus joined them, slotting a fresh magazine into his nailbow.

‘Any idea what they got away with?’ he asked.

‘None,’ said Stenwold helplessly. ‘And no understanding of this at all.’ He took a good long time to recover his breath, leaning back against a wall of Briskall’s entrance hall, staring mournfully at the body of Doctor Nicrephos, whose last desperate request had cost the old man his life – and achieved nothing. Arianna crouched beside him protectively, her head on his shoulder. She had saved his life, he realized. He had hardly noted it in all the confusion, but the Fly-kinden would have had him if she had not stabbed the man first. Spiders played deep games, but he allowed himself to hope that this was it, this was all, and at last the womanly concern she presented to him was the Arianna that really was.

He was unspeakably grateful for her company at that bleak moment.

There was the dead Moth woman to consider, as well. This mixed bag of raiders had all the hallmarks of a mercenary team. The presence of a Wasp did not guarantee they were imperial, nor did it seem likely they were Vekken.

It was all rather more than he could disentangle.

He heard Balkus’s clumping tread, and then the big Ant was back with yet another body slung over his shoulder. As he lowered it to the floor Stenwold saw an elderly Beetle-kinden who had been killed by a single knife-blow to the back of the neck.

‘Master Briskall was at home then,’ Stenwold said weakly. ‘What else did you see through there?’

Balkus shrugged. ‘Bit of a mystery, Master Maker. There’s a nice big lock on this door, and all manner of stuff behind it that any thief would go out of his mind to steal. Some of it’s in locked cages or behind glass, but there’s plenty there just for the grabbing, only they didn’t.’

‘We interrupted them?’ Stenwold suggested.

‘That Spider had something with her when she ran off,’ Balkus pointed out, and he had obviously made his mind up about the sex of the escapee. ‘There’s one thing gone, something square and about so big.’ His hands made a shape no more than six inches to each side. ‘It was just out on a stand, though – nothing this old boy wanted locked away.’

‘Just an opportunistic grab, maybe,’ Stenwold suggested, but an odd thought came to him: Or something Master Briskall did not know the value of.

The three of them then carried the bodies of Briskall and Doctor Nicrephos to the nearest infirmary, although they were both beyond all healing. Stenwold told a reliable-looking soldier about the other bodies, and advised that Briskall’s house should be secured against thieves. Then the three of them returned to Stenwold’s home, to find a messenger waiting on his doorstep with even worse news.

Scyla realized, as she left, that her only regret was that Gaved had escaped. She worked alone for preference, so she had taken no joy in the company the Empire had forced on her.

And she had no intention of sharing a reward with anyone. If this box was so important, then the Wasps would just have to pay the full amount to her alone.

Within a street she had taken on the guise of a portly Beetle woman, easy enough to do under cover of darkness, and was heading towards the nearest city wall. Getting through the Vekken lines would be harder, but she was adept at her craft.

Though heavily carved, the box was otherwise as unassuming as she had been told, but she had been given no time yet to make a detailed examination. If she could find out what was so special about it, then maybe she could raise the asking price. The Empire had a lot of money to throw around, and with a thousand faces at her disposal she had no worries about making enemies. Perhaps she should even impersonate Gaved? Now that would be amusing.