‘I do not believe that,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell the Mantis to kill you? Tell me the truth. Tell it all.’

‘Please, Felise, you do not-’

Thalric hissed in pain as her claws dug into him a little, and Felise got out, ‘Mantis-’

‘Wait!’ Destrachis got out. ‘You will kill me if I tell you, and have me killed if I do not. Is that justice?’

‘Why is it that only the unjust cry for justice?’ Tisamon said. His claw twitched, drawing a spot of blood.

Stenwold felt himself trapped in a world he suddenly did not understand. ‘What is going on?’ he asked.

‘Precisely, Beetle-kinden. Explain all, Destrachis.’

‘I am hired by your family,’ he said quickly, ‘and that is no more than the truth. Not your husband’s noble line, for the Wasps made sure no drop of his bloodline remained. Your own family was not great enough to be extinguished, so you were taken alive. Do you remember being a prisoner of the Empire, Felise?’

‘I was never a prisoner.’

‘Of course you were, and you were to be a slave, but the Arantes rescued you and…’ He stuttered to silence.

‘Speak!’ she commanded.

‘You were… broken.’ He waited to see if the words would kill him. ‘You were not well, in your mind. So your own family took you into their house and hired doctors to make you well, but we… they could not. They tried so many ways, until eventually one used an ancient craft to bring your mind back to the place where it had snapped, and stitch that broken end onto the present day – or thus I can best describe it. Shall I go on?’

She remained silent, but Tisamon shifted behind him, and so Destrachis continued. ‘It did not go well. It was not well done… better not to have meddled, would be my opinion now. But you remembered, at least, the name and face of the man who had done those atrocities to you, and you determined you would have your revenge, whatever the cost. Your family were concerned. They…’ And he stopped again, and Stenwold was surprised to see the Spider’s eyes glitter with tears. ‘Felise…’

‘I remember,’ she said slowly. Thalric saw something surface then in her eyes, and she looked at him anew. ‘I remember you now. You are the man who slew my children.’

He could not nod, would not speak, but something in his face confirmed it.

‘I remember,’ she said again. ‘What have I done?’ She took her hands away abruptly, looking back at the bisected table, at the upright sword, as though they were quite strange to her.

Thalric, shifted, sagging an inch, and faster than Stenwold could follow she whirled back to him, thumb jabbing at his face. It raked a line of blood down his cheek, but that was all.

‘Why can I not kill you?’ she screamed at him. Her clawed hands hovered right before his face, twitching and shaking, but still she could not strike. In the echo of that cry her onlookers were silent. Stenwold saw, in sidelong glances, the same stricken expression appear on the faces of both Tisamon and Destrachis.

Thalric let out a long, slow breath. ‘Because I’m all you’ve got,’ he replied between gritted teeth. ‘I wondered that, when you had me before. How many chances do you need? I’m right here now, so why not just do it? If you want me, what better chance can you possibly look for?’

In a voice almost lost, in the utter silence that followed, she whispered, ‘Help me.’

Destrachis moved forwards solicitously, but it was Tisamon who pushed past to clasp her by the shoulders. Her claws twitched at him but never reached him, although he made no move to stop her.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘I shall find you some food and drink, then a bed.’ He looked back at Thalric. ‘This man shall die at your command, I swear it.’

He led her from the room, pausing only to look Destrachis straight in the face. The Mantis made no threats, though, and after a moment looked away.

They did not come for Che the day after that, either, and she was even provided with a scant meal of soup and broken biscuit. The Wasp army camp become slowly a more permanent affair. She heard the sounds of rough carpentry overhead and guessed that the farmhouse was being extended and fortified. She kept her ears open because, if she could somehow later speak to her friends, she wanted to have something to report to them.

General Malkan, she overheard from the guards, was not moving the army onwards. Though hot-blooded, he was no fool. The casualties the Seventh had sustained meant that they would stand little enough chance before the walls of Sarn, even if Sarn stood alone. What she learned hardly raised the spirits, but it did give some small sliver of satisfaction.

And Sarn was unlikely to be standing alone. Malkan and his officers must be concerned enough about that for the news to filter down to the lowest and the most luckless in their army and, through their bitter gossip, to Che.

Collegium was free of the Vekken, she also learned, and could therefore lend aid to Sarn if needed. Moreover there were fearful whispers of the Ant-kinden’s newest allies. Word was out about the Ancient League and the soldiers were rife with rumours of some age-old secret society binding all the Inapt of the west together, which the Empire’s presence had now brought into the light. Like all Apt races the Wasps had their dark past, when the old kinden had terrorized them with wizardry and nightmares, and some vestige of that remained even now. There was a current of fear running through the Seventh at the thought of having to confront such a thing as the Ancient League.

The more level-headed, however, put the problem as Malkan would see it: if, even with an army at full strength, he pitched against the walls of Sarn, the warriors of Ether-yon and Nethyon could simply swarm down from the north, catching him in a pincer movement. If he attacked them first, the Sarnesh would sally forth from their city. It was not the individual elements, but their combination, that concerned him.

I did this, Che thought to herself. Though she would meet her fate soon enough at the hands of the Empire’s minions, she would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that she had accomplished so much. Faced with the resistance she had helped to build, the Seventh was now going nowhere, merely waiting for another army to be freed to aid it and the Fourth in the conquest of the Lowlands.

Yet she had heard more recently that some problem had arisen with the Fourth and that messengers were not arriving as expected.

In lieu of better information or opportunity, the Wasps were knuckling down and waiting, and their energies were now invested in making their camp defensible. For this entire day they had therefore not been able to spare an artificer interrogator to rack poor Cheerwell, or perhaps they were waiting for the right torture machinery to be sent down the rail from Helleron.

On one occasion a short, dark woman of a kinden Che did not recognize came down and stared at her with hostile eyes for some time, before returning up to the sunlight without uttering a word.

Then the bustle of the camp quieted at last and the conversation she could make out from above was that of sentries only, so she knew it must be night again – and she had survived another day.

I will resist. I will fight. I will fly. But she knew she would do none of these things. She had not that kind of strength.

I wish I could have seen Salma once more. Last time she had been behind bars, he had been there with her, providing her with a source of resilience to draw on, and she was not enough on her own, she realized.

There was a rough sound as the hatch opened, but for a long while nobody entered. Then she caught the faintest gleam of a shuttered lantern and Totho, still in Wasp uniform, came stomping down the steps. As before, he simply stopped and stared at her.

‘I’m still here,’ she said unnecessarily.