‘Do you want to talk?’ he asked. A sharp reply came to her tongue, but she realized that, yes, she did. Another human voice, in whatever circumstances.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘We’ve… grown up, at last, don’t you think?’ He seated himself on the lowest step, right across the room from her, but the stone walls carried his voice perfectly.

‘Is that what this is?’ They had hatched out of the College, with its protective walls, and into a harsher world than they had dreamed of. ‘I’m not fond of it.’

‘It’s about making choices,’ he said. ‘Or… that’s how I see it.’

‘You’ve made your choice, clearly’ she said, too quickly, and instantly regretted it. She saw a shadow pass across his face, and for a moment he seemed about to rise and go, but in the end it all washed past him, just as with the Totho she knew of old.

‘Do you know where the others are now?’ he asked.

‘Is this some kind of interrogation?’

His lip curled. ‘Do you think the Empire gives a bent cog where a few graduates of the College are?’

‘They were all still in Collegium, when I left: I mean Stenwold and Tynisa, and Tisamon. Scuto must be back there by now, though he came to Sarn with us at first.’ She was about to name Achaeos too, but decided better of it.

‘I’d give a lot to be back there, with none of this having happened.’ He frowned. ‘But on the other hand…’

‘What, Totho?’ she demanded. ‘What do you have here, amongst these monsters?’

‘A purpose,’ he said, and after a pause, ‘Che, back then… did you ever… could you have, if I had been… bolder… could you have loved me, ever?’

‘I always loved you,’ she said simply. ‘But not as you mean, not as you wanted. I’m sorry, Totho. I wish I could say something else. I wish I could lie to you about that, but… I owe you the truth. You were always my friend, and maybe I took you for granted, but… not that.’

He sat for a long time as the minutes of the night passed them by, his hands clasped together, without any expression she could interpret, until at last, without a word, he turned and went back up.

She sagged away from the bars, wondering if a lie, even a forced and obvious one, might have bought her something more.

Then he was back, with something slung over his shoulder. He dumped it – a sack, she now saw – on the cellar floor, and went over to the bars. He looked only at the lock. The Wasps had made a hurried job of these cells, and the door was a section of heavy lattice that could be lifted out, secured by bars merely padlocked into place, nothing too complicated.

He opened the shutters on his lantern and took some rods from his toolstrip, crouching down by the first lock. It had been a matter of constant dismay to the College masters how many of their students learned to pick locks, until no Master’s office, private chamber or strongbox was safe from the pranks of their young scholars. Totho had never been the prankish kind, but he made up for that with his understanding.

‘The problem is, Master Drephos looks at people and sees meat,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Something to test machines on. Life has no value for him, and I could come to appreciate that. See the world like that, and you don’t get hurt all the time. I hurt all the time, you see, because I haven’t let go. Let go of you.’

The first lock sprang open, and he stood to attend to the second.

‘You see,’ he went on, ‘it doesn’t matter what you feel about me. Because I can’t seem to shake myself free of you. I don’t think any Spider temptress, any cursed charlatan-magician or Butterfly dancer could have her hooks in as deep as yours are in me. Because I still love you, despite everything, and you came just at the right time to destroy my life one last time.’

And the second lock came free, and he lifted out the lattice with a grunt of effort. Not knowing what to say, she slipped out of her cage.

‘Can you get yourself out of the camp?’ he asked. ‘I can’t help you there but in the sack I’ve put food and water, and a uniform, too. Mostly they’ll just see another Auxillian, but you’ll have to creep past the sentries, and if they catch you… well.’

‘I won’t reveal who freed me,’ she said hurriedly.

‘You will once they ask hard enough.’ His face was bleak.

‘Are they watching the skies?’

‘No, not so much. They’re expecting Sarnesh heading down the rail line, if anything.’

‘Then I’ll fly out,’ she said, and saw his surprise. ‘But you… you can get past them, can’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Totho, you have to come with me.’

‘No,’ he said. There was no give in him. ‘Once you are gone, I have no further ties. I will die, if they find me out, or I will live on here as Drephos’s apprentice, devising newer and better ways of turning men into meat.’

‘Totho, you’re mad! You have to come with me back to Collegium!’

‘Collegium has nothing to interest me any more. Not unless I come to it with an army,’ he told her.

She felt her blood turn to ice, looking into that so-familiar face and seeing only a stranger.

‘But because I do seem to be a traitor by nature, I have still one betrayal left to make. Or perhaps you will see it as one last act of loyalty – to you and Stenwold.’

‘Totho-’

‘Listen.’ He reached into his tunic and produced a scroll, rolled up and then pressed flat. ‘If you do manage to escape, you must take this to Stenwold. Or maybe to Sarn.’

‘What is it?’

‘The design for my snapbow,’ he said. ‘The weapon that broke the Sarnesh.’

She took it hesitantly, as though it might burn her. ‘You realize what you’re doing,’ she said softly. ‘You know what this means.’

‘It means I am giving the Lowlands a chance,’ he said. ‘A small chance and no more. You’d better change clothes, Che. You don’t have as much time as you think.’

He watched her as she changed, and she wondered if he was considering some other future in which she donned this uniform for real, and stayed with him just as she had pleaded for him to go with her.

A

Forty-Three

She stood at the east end of Collegium docks, charred wood crunching beneath her feet, knowing there was all too little time to do what she must.

Down the line of the wharves they were already cutting out the worst of the damage, replacing it with good treated wood, sinking new piles for piers with machines she had never seen before and could not comprehend. These folk were nothing if not industrious, and there was building work like this going on all over the city, not just replacement but improvement.

Felise Mienn stared down into the water. Collegium was a deep-water port and it was black down there, a vertical drop providing enough draft for the bulkiest freighter. What secrets must be buried there, in the silt deep below: what forgotten bones and treasures?

Destrachis would be looking for her, she was aware, but perhaps he would not think of looking here until it was too late. She wished she had not made him speak up.

Thalric had been right when he asked her what came next. Her future, as she had been able to imagine it, ended with his death, so what could she do after that? Once he was dead nothing would have changed, the dead would not be revived, and she would have to turn away from a blank and pointless future to confront the past.

The past was a gnawing horror to her, and just as she had chased Thalric all across the Lowlands, so it had been chasing her.

What had been left unsaid? Destrachis could have spoken more – she could feel the shape of it, though her mind denied her the details. What else was left to know?

Far better not to know. If she stepped off here, the water would embrace her like a lover and draw her down. Her armour would fill with it and, even if her volatile mind changed yet again, there would be nothing she could do to resist. She would finally have taken her fate in her own hands. Let Thalric live, because he would not be able to hurt her any further.