‘My city is a satrapy of the Spiderlands,’ Dariaxes corrected. It was a word Stenwold was only vaguely familiar with but the context told him more than he was happy with. How different was a satrapy from a city the Wasps had conquered? He supposed that the chief difference would be that the Spider-kinden, who could convince anyone of anything, had probably persuaded the Fire Ants that they were perfectly content with their servitude. They were not the only ones, though, that was clear. The Spider-lands were vast – unmapped as far as any reliable atlas of Collegium went – and the Fire Ants had not come alone. Stenwold had already been introduced to a Dragonfly soldier whose ancestors in the Days of Lore had fled so far from the Commonweal that the Spiders had taken them in.

Sour thoughts were easy to hold, with the scars of the war still so fresh. Dariaxes’s men had died outside the walls to make his city safe, and there had been Spider-kinden amongst the dead too, along with Scorpion mercenaries and a dozen other races.

‘Collegium thanks you,’ he told Dariaxes, whose smile told him he had guessed at some of the thoughts in Stenwold’s mind.

Stenwold glanced around the room, seeking escape, and he picked Balkus out of the crowd – a full head over anyone except the Scorpion captain. The big Ant was, at least, enjoying himself. He had a bandage on his face, still, where a Vekken sword had cut open his cheek, but he was still managing to form a smile around it, and there was a young Beetle-kinden woman, an artificer of the College, hanging adoringly on his arm. Stenwold could not begrudge him that.

There was a touch at his elbow, and he turned to see Arianna, with one hand resting on the sling that marked his own war-wound.

‘Ah,’ he said, with false jollity, ‘you’re here to tell me there’s something urgent I need to attend to.’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said, with such intensity that his stomach lurched.

‘Something’s happened?’ he said, instantly worried. ‘What?’

There was such a serious look on her face that it could be nothing good. ‘You had better come with me,’ she said. ‘Some of the guardsmen outside have picked up someone who came asking for you. You need to see this.’

She led him outside, while he was still trying to figure out who it could be. True, everyone seemed to have learned his name during the war, but he had hoped to return to obscurity as soon as it was over.

‘In here,’ Arianna guided him, tense as a taut wire, her hand seeking her knife-hilt. Stenwold’s mind was full of wild speculation as he looked inside, but none wild enough to prepare him for what he saw.

Sitting at a table, between two men of the city militia, was none other than Major Thalric of the Rekef.

*

Beyond the wide tiered steps of the Amphiophos, where the Assembly of Collegium met, there was a broad plaza where ancient statute forbade any market trader to set up stall. In former times the people of the city had gathered there to hear proclamations from their most respected leaders, but more recently it had been a good vantage point from which to protest, wave banners, shout obscenities and throw things at the Assemblers as they hurried inside.

Now it had been returned to its original purpose. The people of Collegium packed it, wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder, with their children held up high to see too, and Fly-kinden thronging every window-ledge, and the roof-gardens packed with even more, since residents were allowing complete strangers up through their houses to enable them to witness this gem of history being cut and mounted.

Stenwold, one of that gem’s key facets, had a hard time bringing his thoughts to the moment. When Thalric had told him that the Wasp major had fled from his own people, Stenwold had not believed him at first, despite the deep wound in his erstwhile enemy’s side that some Inapt healer had neatly dressed. Then Stenwold had recognized the livid mark across the man’s face as the result of burning from a Wasp sting, and had begun to think. Arianna had urged him not to believe anything the man said, for Thalric was subtle as a Spider, she said, and Stenwold had no doubt that was true.

But even Spiders, it was said, got caught in their own traps, every so often.

Lineo Thadspar led them out onto the steps, and the roar of approval seemed to shake the very marble beneath them, making Stenwold stagger a little until Balkus caught his good arm to steady him. There were no words in that roar, but the unadulterated joy of a people freed from terror. Ever since the previous Vekken attack had retreated from the city before the arrival of a Sarnesh relief force, in the days when these grown men of Collegium were but boys, there had been the knowledge that the Vekken would try again. Now the Vekken army had been smashed so decisively it would take that city a decade to regain its strength.

Thadspar had been intending to speak but the crowd just would not be silent, continuing to thunder its approval for the saviours of the city. A junior artificer had hurried forward and passed Thadspar a speaking horn, but there was not a device invented that would have made his voice clear over that joyous throng, and so he waited. Stenwold, who had always taken the old man for a shrewd politician, saw tears in his eyes.

Back in a guest suite, and under heavy guard, was Thalric – Major Thalric of the Rekef – who had limped into the city with Stenwold’s name on his lips. Major Thalric, who had nowhere else to go, by his own story, and so had finally come here.

‘What would I do with you?’ Stenwold had asked him sharply. ‘We are enemies, you and I.’ He could not rid himself of what this man had been ready to do to his niece Che, when she had been in his clutches.

‘I have only enemies left in the world,’ Thalric had admitted. He was a man fighting to control his circumstances, not drowning but not swimming either. The next adverse wave could swallow him. ‘The fact that I am sitting here talking to you shows that you are less my enemy than those I once called friends. As for what I can do for you, I know something about what the Empire may do next. I know a great deal more than you about how the Empire does things.’

‘And how can I trust you?’

‘You’ll never know if you can,’ the Wasp had said, ‘and I’m sure that little traitress on your arm will urge you to put me to death but, really, will you ever have a better chance?’

Stenwold frowned, now, in retrospect. He did not want this, to be here at the focus of all this cheer and attention. Instead he needed to deal with Thalric and make his decision. He hated unfinished business.

Still, if he put those nagging thoughts aside, just for a moment, there was some strange satisfaction in finding himself here in a jubilant scene that would surely be recorded in history books to come. The saviours of Collegium, the defiers of Vek. Thadspar stood with the other surviving members of the War Council, fewer than might have been expected, and a handful of other citizens who had led the defence: militia officers, stalwart merchants and artisans, and College artificers, even Master Hornwhill, who had been so very reluctant for his inventions to be used at all. Balkus stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tarkesh commander, Parops, and beside them was the slighter, rangier form of Dariaxes, with his constant copper smile. Then there was Teornis of the Aldanrael, dressed as soldier-gone-fop in a gold breastplate, jewelled gorget and a helmet adorned with glittering wings. His expression was one of modest contentment, which drew attention to him far more than waving and grinning ever could. There were others, too, of his own company: Scorpion, Fly, Dragonfly, Spider. The steps before the Amphiophos were crowded today.

At last the crowd had quieted enough for Thadspar to be heard, and he left it another beat before he spoke.