Her reflection was faint in the water rippling below. She could see the outline of her shoulders, her draped cloak. Her face, though, was just a dark oval.

She stepped forwards to let her momentum topple her towards the sea.

Someone caught her cloak by its trailing edge and hauled her back. For a moment she was suspended ludicrously, at some bizarre angle, and then she felt rage at him, the wretched doctor her family had set on her, and her wings exploded from her back and she turned and stooped on him with claws bared.

She had lashed out at him three times before she realized this was not Destrachis. Instead it was the Mantis Tisamon who was dodging backwards, although a shallow line across his forehead bore witness to her first strike.

She froze instantly, and Tisamon fell back into a defensive stance, waiting for her. On the periphery of their attention, a dozen dockworkers were staring at them, unsure whether this was a fight to the death or just some kind of theatre.

‘Why?’ she demanded, as though he had done something terrible to her.

‘Because you are worth more than this,’ he replied.

‘You do not know that.’

‘I know. I have spoken with the Spider doctor and he has told me many things.’ The knowledge Tisamon had been given sat heavily on him, for the story Felise had choked out of Destrachis was but one half of it.

Her golden skin had turned pale now. ‘No, you cannot…’

‘You understand what that means,’ he insisted, and though he had never stinted at cruelty before, he winced now. ‘You cannot wash it away with your own death. Nor can you blot out the knowledge by killing that Spider creature. You cannot even achieve it by killing Thalric – though that would be a service to everyone. I now know, and I would rather I did not, but I do know. To take that knowledge from the world you must kill me, before you cast your own life away.’ Destrachis’s conclusion of the tale was raw in Tisa-mon’s memory: how Felise, having awakened with the thought of Thalric’s death obsessive in her mind, had found herself barred up, with her room in her family’s house made into an asylum to protect her from herself.

And she had killed them, all the other doctors and, more than that, she had with her own hands made herself the last of her line. Her aunt, her cousins, all left dead at her hands, as she strode through her own house in blind fury wielding her husband’s sword.

He was poised to act, knowing his clawed gauntlet was his to call on the moment she drew blade.

Instead, she said, ‘I don’t wish to kill you. I don’t understand you. What is it you feel?’

Her face was all confusion, and that touched him. ‘I had a love, Felise Mienn, as you have had, and just as yours was taken, the Wasps took mine from me. We are alike, then, and so I think I understand you, perhaps even better than your Spider does. If you seek a purpose, then the Empire still stands and we must fight it. I would be honoured to fight beside you.’

Her stance softened noticeably, and at last he allowed himself to relax.

It was good to find a time and place when messengers were not currently seeking him out, or at least if they were they were not finding him. Now it was just Stenwold and Arianna dodging the public acclaim that so many other Assemblers were soaking up whether they had earned it or not.

But Stenwold was not a politician by choice. He was a soldier, an agent, a spymaster, all in one, and he played his own games that had never needed any public approval.

The game was at a halt, for now, the pieces patiently waiting. The Wasp army had not assaulted Sarn, or not according to the last messenger’s report. The Fourth was in no position to assault anything, so Merro and Egel were spared Wasp occupation. Teornis had sent messengers back to his family and its allies, urging them to strengthen the border, and with word of the Collegium concessions too, just to sweeten the pot. He was a likeable man, professionally so, though Stenwold was not sure whether to like him or not.

Achaeos had awakened at last, though still very weak. He had been frantic about something, not Che’s fate but something else, something he would not quite explain to Stenwold. He had begun asking for Tisamon, instead, but the Mantis was off somewhere on his own inscrutable errands. Stenwold had his own plans for Tisamon. The Mantis and his daughter would go with Thalric, to see if they could track down Che. Stenwold had no genuine trust in Thalric of the Rekef, but Tisamon and Tynisa would keep him in check if anyone could.

For now there was a pause, a heartfelt pause, in all that business, and he had brought Arianna to one of the best-kept secrets of the Amphiophos. Behind the domed building itself there was a garden, walled so high that it was always in the shade, and yet the artificer’s art, with glass and lenses, had funnelled the sun there, so that plants from all across the Lowlands thrived in a wild tangle that the gardeners daily needed to cut back. Here little pumps made water run as though a natural stream passed through, and there were statues that had been old when the Moths fled the city, and stone seats and, by tradition, nobody raised their voices or quarrelled here.

The rain was spotting down through the broad gaps between the glass but there was shelter enough amid the trees, and Stenwold took Arianna to a lichen-dusted seat, where she looked about her in astonishment.

‘I’d never even heard of this place,’ she said.

‘The Assembly prefer not to talk about it overmuch. A little selfishness, I think, that can at least be understood. I always thought this was the only worthwhile reward of belonging to their ranks, though I never had the time to appreciate it. And I won’t have any time again, I’m sure. Tomorrow the war begins anew for me.’

‘For me as well then,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t ask it of you.’

‘And you wouldn’t have to. I’ll fight your war, Sten, even if all that means is being there for you when you need me.’

He looked at her and, out of habit, thought, But can I trust you? He realized though, that he did trust her, and the final piece of that had fallen into place not when she saved his life at the Briskall place, but when Balkus had accepted her. He decided that Balkus, that big, solid and unimaginative man, could see more clearly than Stenwold himself on this subject.

‘Stenwold,’ Arianna said, and when he turned to look at her, her eyes held a warning in them. ‘We’re being watched. I’m sure of it.’

He stood swiftly. ‘Some other Assembler, no doubt.’ But he did not believe that.

Then a voice came from amid the tangled undergrowth. ‘I could have put an arrow in your head, old man. Not that there’s much chance you’d notice.’

Stenwold reached for his sword and discovered that, yes, he still wore it at his waist, so familiar now that he donned it automatically. It slid easily from its scabbard. ‘How did you get in here?’

The sword was not all that was familiar. He knew the voice too, when it replied, ‘I got in here because I’m a Fly and your clumsy pack of kinden don’t even understand what ‘fly’ means.’

The speaker emerged: a bald-headed little man with his ugly face and knowing smile, and Stenwold said, ‘Nero?’ in tones of sheer disbelief.

‘It’s been a while, Sten. Who’s the lady?’

‘This is Arianna,’ and the awkward pause as he thought of how to introduce her obviously told Nero all he needed to know, for the mocking smile was even broader now. ‘And this is, Nero, the artist,’ Stenwold explained to her awkwardly.

Nero grinned at Stenwold. ‘You get bigger and fatter every time I see you.’

‘And you’re still ugly.’ Stenwold’s retort came without hesitation from twenty years away. ‘You’ve no idea how good it is to see you. Why are you here? Are you staying long?’

‘Just a messenger boy, me,’ Nero explained. ‘With a message from a friend of yours, though, and there’s a whole cartload of news, so you and your lady better sit back down and listen.’